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!
The author of four award-winning books and a decades-long editor and book coach/marketer, John Sibley Williams can assist with everything from individual poem to manuscript critiques; regular book coaching; 1-on-1 workshops; the creation of pitch letters, press kits, and book proposals; agent/publisher research; and more. His passion is assisting poets and writers by tailoring all strategies to their individual needs. View flyer or visit website for more information.
Creative Nonfiction #78 is themed “Experiments in Voice” and focuses on unconventional narrators and shifting perspectives. What is voice? How do you find yours? How can you change it, rearrange it, play with it? And then, how can you use it to make change in the world? This issue of Creative Nonfiction celebrates writerly playfulness, exploration, and risk-taking, featuring breathless, epistolary, speculative, second-person, and snarky essays. Plus, an interview with Hysterical memoirist Elissa Bassist, close reads of work by Steve Coughlin, Jaquira Díaz, Margo Jefferson, and R. Eric Thomas, micro-essays, and contributions from Sonya Huber, Beth Kephart, Leath Tonino, and Jill Christman among others.
Hot off the press, the Fall 2022 issue of The Main Street Rag features an interview with author of Songbirds & Stray Dogs and Editor in Chief of Reckon Review Meagan Lucas on “The Business of Publishing.” The issue also includes Fiction by Michael L. Woodruff, Jennifer Anne Moses, David Bradley, Robert Perchan, David Sapp, Siamak Vossoughi, and Poetry by Richard Band, Anemone Beaulier, Jane Blanchard, Matthew J. Spireng, Ace Boggess, Gary Carter, Holly Day, RC deWinter, Joanne Esser, Andrea Potos, Craig Evenson, Gary Finke, Dennis Herrell, Joseph Hutchison, Lloyd Jacobs, Chuck Joy, Jeanne Julian, Robert Lee Kendrick, R.J. Lambert, Kevin LeMaster, Kerry Loughman, John Macker, Ken Massicotte, Gary Mesick, Deni Naffziger, Leslie Hodge, Andrew Oram, T R Poulson, Marjorie Power, Timothy Robbins, Peter McNamara, Russell Rowland, Peter Serchuk, Richard Weaver, Gabriel Welsch, Steven Winn, Francine Witte, Michael Young, and Richard Levine. TMSR is available in single copy as well as by subscription.
Develop your author brand & marketing plan. In this digital age, writers must have a clear brand and be comfortable managing the marketing of their work. Learn from Author, Writing Coach & Marketing Entrepreneur Lynne Golodner how to create your author brand and build a marketing plan that you are eager to implement. This 12-week Mastermind begins January 12, 2023 and has only 6 spots left! Reserve yours now by emailing [email protected]. View flyer for more information.
The newest issue of AGNI continues the celebration of fifty years of publication, opening with William Pierce’s Editor’s Note “On the Fraught Subject of Value.” Co-editor Sven Birkerts and Founding Editor Askold Melnyczuk each contribute their own “Reflections at 50” essay, in addition to Fiction by Caren Beilin, Teju Cole, Jesus De La Torre, Tamas Dobozy, David Hayden, Emmelie Prophète, Ellen Wiese; Essays by Ariirau, George Estreich, Karl Kirchwey, Eileen Myles, Sofia Oumhani Benbahmed, Jessie van Eerden; Poetry by Kristina Andersson Bicher, Hannah Baker Saltmarsh, Michael Bazzett, Cyrus Cassells, Robert Cording, Daniela Danz, Diana Marie Delgado, Matt Donovan, Steven Espada Dawson, Chanda Feldman, Julien Gracq, Heo Nanseolheon, Mark Irwin, Preeti Kaur Rajpal, Wayne Koestenbaum, Janiru Liyanage, Alexa Luborsky, Oksana Maksymchuk, Corey Marks, Carol Muske-Dukes, Nicholas Pierce, Diane Seuss, Natalie Shapero, Elena Shvarts, Nomi Stone, Michael Torres, Tristan Tzara; and a retrospective art featuring images of agni/fire by Gerry Bergstein, Christopher Cozier, Katherine Jackson, Deepa Jayaraman, Wosene Worke Kosrof, Anne Neely, Rosamond Purcell and Anna Schuleit Haber with an essay by Associate Editor Shuchi Saraswat. Many works from the issue can be read in full on the publication’s website.
Deadline: February 1, 2023 Judge: Alan Feldman. 1st Prize $1,000, 2nd $500. Poems in English up to 60 lines, any subject, unpublished at submission. Enter at Yeats.Submittable.com/Submit or mail to WB Yeats Society of NY, National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, NYC 10003. Entrant’s name only on separate Submittable entry form or file card. Entry $15 for first, $12 each additional. View flyer and visit website to learn more.
Application Deadline: January 15 UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program with fully funded assistantships and stipends. UNCG offers courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction, plus teaching opportunities and editorial work for The Greensboro Review. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials and develop their craft in a lifelong community of writers. Note our new December 15th priority consideration deadline!Visit our website and view our flyer to learn more.
Deadline: December 31, 2022 The Tartt First Fiction Award from Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama is given annually to a collection of short stories written in English by an American citizen. Writers cannot have already published or be under contract to publish a fiction collection. Winner will receive $1000, plus standard royalty contract, which includes 60 copies of the book. Visit the Livingston Press website or view flyer to learn more.
In Defense of My People Hispanic Civil Rights Series By Alonso S. Perales, Trans. by Emilio Zamora Arte Publico Press, November 2021
Originally published in Spanish in 1936 and 1937, In Defense of My People contains articles, letters and speeches written by Alonso S. Perales, one of the most influential civil rights activists of the early twentieth century. When Mexican-American veterans of World War II were denied service in a South Texas pool hall, even while wearing their uniforms, Perales wrote about the incident for The San Antonio Express. He also exhorted his community to secure an education and participate in civic duties. His form letter, “How to Request School Facilities for Our Children,” helped parents secure schools “equal to those furnished children of Anglo-American descent.”
Deadline: March 31, 2023 The 17th annual National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) are open to all English language printed books available for sale, including small presses, mid-sized independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. NIEA is proud to be a champion of self-publishing and independent presses. Monetary awards, sponsorships, and entry rules are described in detail on our website.
Madville Publishing is offering 20% off all sales on our website through December 16. We can’t trust the postman to get it to you by Christmas after that! We have some beautiful fall titles, something for everyone on your Christmas list. Scan the code or use TKSGVNG20 at checkout. View flyer or visit website.
Our Lady of the Lake University’s 100% online Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts (MA-MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice prepare critically engaged and socially aware scholars, writers, educators, and professionals. This nationally unique, virtual program combines creativity with practical skills and critical knowledge, while keeping in mind the pursuit of social justice. View flyer or visit website to learn more.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner in the US. If you get a long weekend to write, edit, and submit, NewPages is here to help with our Where to Submit Round-up for the week of November 18, 2022.
Want to get alerts for new opportunities sent directly to your inbox every Monday afternoon instead of waiting for our Friday Where to Submit Round-ups? For just $5 a month, you can get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today! Free subscribers get access to the latest submission opportunities on the following Monday.
Watchman, What of the Night Poems by W. Luther Jett CW Books, June 2022
W. Luther Jett’s newest collection, Watchman, What of the Night? bears witness to a world in turmoil, as tyrants rise with the warming seas, while entire generations are displaced by war and catastrophe. The poet asks, what centre can hold in this whirlwind night? Here are poems which speak of past calamities in order to hold up a lamp to pierce the present murk and fog in search of clarity. This book is an alarm-bell, a cry in the night, and above all else, a call to action. Visit the CW Books website to read a sample from the collection.
Hailing from Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, The Meadow has established itself as a leading annual literary publication with works being recognized by Utne Read, the Pushcart Prize anthology, The Best American Sports Writing anthology, and the Best American Essay anthology. Co-Editors Lindsay Wilson and Robert Lively have maintained one of the few literary journals in the country that publishes their students alongside experienced writers and artists and involves students in the production as well as board oversight of operations. Add to this: the publication is completely free. Print copies are distributed on campus, in the community, and to contributors, and a complete copy of the publication is available to read online via Flipbook platform. I only just started to read the 2022 edition, and am already taken by the opening poems: “The Ambulance Took Away Another Person Today” by Alice “Lucky” Lacerenza, “filaments” by Robin Gow, “plenty” and “big love” by Kolbe Riney, “Minor Miracles in Time Travel” and “Thirty Thieves and the Thunder Chief” by Patrick Meeds, “A Tooth is a Tree” by Matthew Burnside, and “The Walk” by Merlin Ural Rivera. With 74 contributors, this is the kind of magazine to “carry along” or bookmark to read whenever you can spare a free moment or hunker into and be swept away page after page.
Like many well-intentioned meditators, I struggle with the concept of metta, that effort to show loving kindness both to ourselves and others, including our enemies. “Be like the Dalai Lama…” To which I respond, “We cannot all be Dalai Lamas.” However, “How to Pray for your Enemies” by Christina Legarda [pictured] from the most recent issue of Sky Island Journal has been the keenest instructional I have encountered.
It begins, “First, get the fantasy of vengeance / out of your system. The way / you would core them out / with your sharpest knife…” which is the most un-Dalai Lama thought we might gravitate toward (and which Mindset author Carol Dweck says is prevalent in both the fixed- and growth-minded). After filling out this fantasy with additional detail (which feels more disturbing than satisfying – and rightly so), Legarda moves the reader to the next phase, to cry and “collect all your tears / and put them in the sun till all you have / is their salt [. . . ] and how tiny / the heap will seem to you, after all / those tears, a little mountain no bigger / than the print from your thumb.” While that may seem dismissive, it actually acknowledges how the internalized pain and torment we manifest results in very little that is tangible or beneficial to us. It is both a validation and a call to “move on.”
Legarda moves on by taking the experience from the external to within, taking the reader to go “sit alone in the desert” until the vision of a child comes, “the hungry child, crying child / hiding behind your enemy’s face,” telling the reader to embrace this child, “until you no longer wish / to cut out your own core; / until the child inside you / weeps no more.”
With this, Legarda brings the instruction full circle to that initial vengeful evisceration, showing us how there is no other. The damage we do, we do to ourselves, and that child is our own self who needs loving kindness.
“How to Pray for Your Enemies” by Cristina Legarda. Sky Island Journal, Fall 2022.
Reviewer bio: Denise Hill is the Editor of NewPages, which welcomes reviews of books as well as individual poems, stories, and essays. If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.
The fall issue of Carve means being able to read the winning entries of their annual Raymond Carver Short Story Contest!
First Place “To Love a Stranger is Certain Death” by Brandon J. Choi
Second Place “A Rugged Border” by Candice May
Third Place “Don’t Speak” by Megan Callahan
Editor’s Choice “Birdsong” by Abby Provenzano “-K” by Ned Carter Miles
But that’s not all! The issue also includes interviews with each of the winners in a feature aptly titled “What We Talk About,” as well as Carve’s intriguing “Decline/Accept,” in which an author whose work Carve ‘declined’ was accepted elsewhere, giving the author a chance to explain their perspective on the rejection and the process that led to the work’s acceptance. This issue’s author is Steve Fox for his work “Then It Would Be Raining,” which Carve rejected and which went on to win the Whitefish Review Montana Prize for Fiction.
Readers can also enjoy poetry from Katy Aisenberg, William Erickson, Elizabeth Sylvia, Rachel Marie Patterson, and CooXooEii Black, nonfiction from Kimberly Knight, and the forward-looking “One to Watch” – an interview with Mazli Koca by Anna Zumbahlen.
Happy 90th to Willow Springs! Well, 90th ISSUE that is! Included in this installment is a special feature with Albert Godbarth, beginning with several poems and followed by an interview, which is a bit of a unicorn since Goldbarth “is not a fan of interviews. He would rather write poems than speak about them, and he would rather we read the poems than ask about them.” Also included in this issue are works by Hussain Ahmed, Rasha Alduwaisan, Nicole V Basta, Denver Butson, Aran Donovan, Kindall Fredricks, James Grabill, Juliana Gray, Tom Mccauley, Joan Murray, Matthew Nienow, Triin Paja, Amanda Maret Scharf, Emily Schulten, Melissa Studdard, Elizabeth Tannen, Fritz Ward, David Wojciechowski, Gregory Byrd, Anca Fodor, Jason Graff, Julie Innis, Anthony Kelly, and Lauren Osborn. And that beautiful goat on the cover is Heavens Falling by Alexis Trice.
The latest issue of New Letters opens with Editor Christie Hodgen exploring Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat” as well as Frank O’Connor’s analysis of it in relation to what the staff at New Letters looks for in their submissions selection – those nuances of what “transforms the short story into a true art form.” Including essays and poetry in that mix are the contributors to this issue: Daniel Chacón, Drew Calvert, Mary Rechner, Anna Schaeffer, Doug Ramspeck, Shane Stricker, Corie Rosen, Amanda Schmidt, Danielle Harms, Matthew Raymond, Lorraine Hanlon Comanor, Maria Zoccola, Kwame Dawes, Fleda Brown, Campbell McGrath, Lisa Lewis, Ted Kooser, Albert Goldbarth, Edith Lidia Clare. And, a new feature – chapbook publication, debuting with Homewrecker by Kate Northrop. Paintings and collages by Kathy Liao complete the volume.
Alone in the House of My Heart Poetry by Kari Gunter-Seymour Swallow Press, September 2022
Ohio Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour’s second full-length collection resounds with candid, lyrical poems about Appalachia’s social and geographical afflictions and affirmations. History, culture, and community shape the physical and personal landscapes of Gunter-Seymour’s native southeastern Ohio soil, scarred by Big Coal and fracking, while food insecurity and Big Pharma leave their marks on the region’s people. A musicality of language swaddles each poem in hope and a determination to endure. Alone in the House of My Heart offers what only art can: a series of thought-provoking images that evoke such a clear sense of place that it’s familiar to anyone, regardless of where they call home.
Bellevue Literary Review‘s newest issue (43) is themed “Recovery,” which Editor-in-Chief Danielle Ofri comments, “When we initially considered recovery as a theme for BLR, Covid-19 wasn’t yet a twinkle in any epidemiologist’s eye. [. . . ] It can be exhausting to contemplate all that is happening, much less consider how we might ever recover. Literature can never offer a ‘how-to’ manual for recovery—that we’ll leave to the strategists of the world. Rather, it offers an opportunity to grapple with the individual strands of our lives, teasing out one tiny aspect to ripple slowly through our fingers. Literature won’t necessarily give us the answers, but it will help us wrestle with the questions.”
Helping us wrestle with the questions in this Fall/Winter issue is Fiction by Kyle Impini, Andrea McLaughlin, Meredith Talusan, Yen Ha, Arya Samuelson, Wes Byers, Margaret Buckhanon, Julia Mascioli, Christopher Mohar, Daniel Pope; Nonfiction by Sakena Jwan Washington, Saima Afreen, Ucheoma Onwutuebe, Carolyn Abram, Rebecca Grossman-Kahn, William Walker, Diane LeBlanc; Poetry by Anthony Aguero, Monique Ferrell, Emily Hockaday, Gaetan Sgro, Lolita Stewart-White, Stephanie Choi, Anne-Marie Thompson, Talia Bloch, Rochelle Robinson-Dukes, Tara Ballard, Nicholas Yingling, Holly Mitchell, Denise Duhamel, Carrie Purcell Kahler, Nina Clements, Kathryne David Gargano.
The Wake and the Manuscript Fiction by Ansgar Allen Anti-Oedipus Press, December 2022
In this brooding and obsessive novel, Ansgar Allen recounts the story of a nameless man who attends a funerary wake with no other distraction than papers that once belonged to the body on display. The deceased considered the papers to be his magnum opus, a text that unraveled everything he had been educated to accept, beginning with the spectre of religion—namely The Church of Christ, Scientist—and ending with the very fabric of educated, civilized thought. Allen’s protagonist thinks he’s above the conclusions drawn in the titular manuscript, but the blurred lines between what he reads and what he sees in himself incite an apocalypse of introspection. The result is a dark, labyrinthine attempt to diminish (and eventually annihilate) the memory of the man who came to rest on the table before him. Literary and existential, The Wake and the Manuscript explores the vagaries of death, identity, desire, and indoctrination as it (un)buries a history of delusion that speaks volumes about the human condition.
Happy Veteran’s Day. Don’t forget to take some time today to support your veterans – maybe write a piece about them or pull out a piece in progress you’ve been meaning to finish. Looking for a home for your work? Dive into our Where to Submit Round-up for November 11, 2022. And speaking of Veterans, don’t forget today is the deadline to submit to the first edition of literary magazine ISSUED.
Want to get alerts for new opportunities sent directly to your inbox every Monday afternoon instead of waiting for our Friday Where to Submit Round-ups? For just $5 a month, you can get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today! Free subscribers get access to the latest submission opportunities on the following Monday.
Kaleidoscope magazine creatively focuses on the experiences of disability through literature and the fine arts publishing personal essays, creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and book reviews. Issue 85 contains nuggets of contentment and acceptance. The featured essay is “My Mother’s Geranium” by AnnaLee Wilson. Desperate to uncover her family’s history and the mystery disease impacting many of the women in it, the author began asking her aging mother questions in search of answers. This essay is the result of those inquisitive visits. This issue’s featured artist is Alana Ciena Tillman, a mouth artist and entrepreneur. Her “Happy Cow” image on the cover is delightful. Kaleidoscope hopes readers will enjoy the poetry, essays, and stories of strength, connection, and contentment offered by their contributors: Marcia Pradzinski, Nancy Deyo, Troy Reeves, Kirie Pedersen, Evelyn Arvey, Sylvia Melvin, Cristina Hartmann, John William, Kale Bandy, Jen Eve Taylor, Doug Tanoury, Dina S. Towbin, Mary Wemple, Colleen Anderson, Levi J. Mericle, and Sandra J. Lindow.
Faith journal The Unmooring is currently accepting submissions of writing, art, and photography from women and female-identifying persons. All issues chosen for publication in Issue 5 will receive a $50 stipend.
Literary magazine Philadelphia Stories is currently accepting unpublished poems from writers living in the United States for its 2023 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry. Deadline to enter is November 30.
Celebrations of Healing is an anthology currently seeking autobiographical stories of meaningful, uplifting, sensual and/or erotic moments of intimacy and discovery by those who have previously experienced sexual abuse.
Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose publishes three issues a year, two online and one print. They are currently open to submissions of poetry, craft essays, fiction, hybrid work, nonfiction, and creative nonfiction for their 2023 issues.
Dolore Minimo Poetry by Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto Translated by Gabriella Fee and Dora Malech Saturnalia Books, October 2022
In Dolore Minimo, Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto attends to her own becoming in language both tender and fierce, painful and luminous. This collection, Vivinetto’s first, charts the course of her gender transition in poems that enact a mutually constitutive relationship between self and place, interrogating the foundations of physical, cultural, and emotional landscapes assumed or averred immutable. Her imagination is rooted in the Sicilian landscape of her native Siracusa, even as that ground shifts under foot in response to the poet’s own emotional and physical transformations. Vivinetto engages with classical mythology, Italian feminist theory, and received constructs of family, religion, and gender to explore the terrors and pleasures of a childhood that culminates in a second birth, in which she must be both mother and child. Fee and Malech’s collaborative translations reflect the polyvocal and processual qualities of Vivinetto’s poetry, using language that foregrounds an active liminality and expresses the multiplicities of the self in dynamic conversation over the course of the collection. In Dolore Minimo, the lyric “I” is a chorus, but an intimate one.
The Common‘s mission has always been to deepen our individual and collective sense of place. This fall, Issue 24 of the magazine gives readers the chance to explore the creative possibilities of disaster, ponder the responsibility of telling others’ stories, and reflect on the power dynamics that arise along racial, religious, and regional lines. Contributors to this most recent issue include Fiction by Sindya Bhanoo, Ahmed Naji, Kathleen Heil, Gerardo Sámano Córdova Logan Lane, Gabriel Carle, Rossella Milone; Essays by Alexis M. Wright, Robin Lee Carlson Alexandra Teague, Meera Nair; Poetry by Tommye Blount, Joseph O. Legaspi, Akwe Amosu, Austin Segrest, Hussain Ahmed, Anacaona Rocio Milagro, Sara Munjack, Tom Paine, Elizabeth Metzger, Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Darius Simpson, David Mills, Robert Fanning, Terri Witek, Daniel Tobin, Matt Donovan.
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 22nd issue features poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from contributors around the globe. Accomplished, well-established authors are published—side by side—with fresh, emerging voices. Readers are provided with a powerful, focused literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. Always free to access, and always free from advertising, discover what over 115,000 readers in 145 countries and over 700 contributors already know; the finest new writing can be found where the desert meets the mountains.
Contributors in the Fall 2022 issue include Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez, Amanda Leal, Amy Marques, Angela Williamson Emmert, Barun Saha, Carly Taylor, Christian Knoeller, Cristina Legarda, Daniela Paraguya Sow, Doug Jacquier, Erin Olson, Evangeline Sanders, Greg Rapier, James K. Zimmerman, Jason Brightwell, Jen Schneide, Jeniya Mard, Jeremy Dixon, Jolene Won, Jonathan Odell, Katy Luxem, Lee Potts, Lindsay Rockwell, Lorrie Ness, Matt Hohner, Nicholas Trandahl, Nicole Rollender, Pepper Trail, Phillip Sterling, Rose Mary Boehm, Sam Fouts, Shanna Yetman, Shannon Huffman Polso, Susan Su, Tara Williams, Tawnya Gibson, Tina Lentz-Mcmillan, and Wren Jones.
In the Plague Year Poetry by W.H. New Rock’s Mills Press, September 2021
A book still timely in its content and as a testament to our shared experience, In the Plague Year is a book about living through the Covid-19 pandemic, when a coronavirus and its variants swept around the globe. In this suite of poems, William New reveals how, from March 2020 to March 2021, people coped with the threat. This is a book about love and death, laughter and loss, the price of isolation, and the cost of staying alive. This pandemic was no minor unease, and this book is no workaday diary: it’s a powerful record of people’s lives as a new pandemic vocabulary became the idiom of the day. In these poems, people prove to be both dismissive and empathetic; officials react both creatively and slowly; institutions adapt or fail; not everyone survives. New’s poems are fresh, witty, serious, and sensitive―a powerful personal documentary that testifies to the strength of community.
Celebrating a quarter of a century of publishing, Water~Stone Review Executive Editor Meghan Maloney-Vinz writes in the introduction to the 2022 annual issue just how long a time this is for a literary journal, “It is a rarity in a world saturated with places and ways to publish and in a time wrought with budget cuts and conglomerate takeovers. We are grateful for our long ride.”
Helping celebrate this milestone are the many contributors to this issue, which can be read online or in print: Fiction by Shannon Scott, Annie Trinh, Maureen Aitken, Rachel Finn-Lohmann, Nadia Born, A. Muia, J. G. Jesman, Davida Kilgore, Ernestine Saankaláxt Hayes; Poetry by Jennifer Huang, Tara Westmor, Michael Garrigan, Patrick Cabello Hansel, Alice Duggan, Ty Chapman, Đenise Hạnh Huỳnh, Nancy Shih-Knodel, Rosalynde Vas Dias, Sin Yong-Mok, Kathryn Savage, Jeong Ho-Seung, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Beatrice Lazarus, Walker James, Jason Ryou, Kim Haengsook, Hwang Yuwon, Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Ha Jaeyoun, Chloë Moore, Eva Song Margolis, David Melville, Robert Hedin; Creative Non-Fiction by Ciara Alfaro, Catharina Coenen, J. Jacqueline Mclean, Gregor Langen, Cole W. Williams, tswb, Suzanne Manizza Roszak, Michael Hahn, Jean Mcdonough, Joseph Holt, Brad Hagen; and an interview with Michael Torres.
The Contemporary Leonard Cohen: Response, Reappraisal, and Rediscovery Edited by Kait Pinder and Joel Deshaye Wilfrid Laurier University Press, November 2022
The death of Leonard Cohen received media attention across the globe, and this international star remains dear to the hearts of many fans. This book examines the diversity of Cohen’s art in the wake of his death, positioning him as a contemporary, multi-media artist whose career was framed by the twentieth-century and neoliberal contexts of its production. The authors borrow the idea of “the contemporary” especially from philosophy and art history, applying it to Cohen for the first time—not only to the drawings that he included in some of his books but also to his songs, poems, and novels. This idea helps us to understand Cohen’s techniques after his postmodern experiments with poems and novels in the 1960s and 1970s. It also helps us to see how his most recent songs, poems, and drawings developed out of that earlier material, including earlier connections to other writers and musicians.
LILIPOH: The Spirit in Life quarterly print magazine features art, poetry, reviews, and news related to ‘culture creatives,’ holistic health, well-being, creativity, spirituality, gardening, education, art, and social health. The newest issue includes articles on educator self-care, safety in storytelling, implicit requests from young children, hypersensitivity, climate change and its impact on farmers, celebrating pride, digital sketchbooks, and much more for readers to enjoy. Some content is available to read for free online.
Janet Edmonds’s debut poetry collection from Sea Crow Press, Small Craft, seeks to answer two fundamental questions regarding the relationship between language and setting:
Is it possible to capture the essence of a certain place with words?
How is one able to properly articulate the aspects that define a space or a place, and implement language to reflect the attributes at the core of a location?
These poems immerse readers in the sights, sounds, and experiences that encapsulate a life in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. From the spring tides “disporting with each new and full moon, / tuned to waxing lunar cycles” to the sand where “each page of wind and ice grinds out / …eroded fossils, rocks, and minerals” to the rainbow’s “ascension of raindrops refracting reflections / of ages and places traversing the harbor,” no aspect of the natural landscape remains untouched or forgotten by Edmonds. Cycling through the seasons to present a rich image of a place during all walks of life, the reader goes on a journey from the “Dogwood, cherry, lilac blossom, petal” of the spring to the “Light streaks of long nights’ shooting stars” of the winter solstice. Time has no influence on this place, for no matter the time of year or how much time has passed since setting foot in this landscape, there is a certainty in the continuous beauty. “Across the dunes, the Province Lands: / Roiling crests crash the swash,” she writes, “and mulct the shore of every trace / Of time / And tracks / And tendered hand.” Edmonds’ poetry is a beautiful testament to the nature of Cape Cod, and the way she implements language to highlight the aspects which enhance the individuality and uniqueness of her chosen place makes her reader feel like they are coming home – or discovering home for the first time.
Small Craft by Janet Edmonds. Sea Crow Press, March 2022.
Reviewer bio: Catherine Hayes is a graduate student in English at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts and resides in the Boston area. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Blood & Thunder: Musings of the Art of Medicine, Atticus Review, NewPages, and an anthology with Wising up Press. She can be found on Twitter @Catheri91642131
Established by combat veterans and maintained by a diverse board of veterans, military spouses, and writers compelled by themes of social justice and human resilience, The Wrath-Bearing Tree publishes essays, reviews, fiction, and poetry on military, economic, and social violence written by those who have experienced military, economic, and social violence or their consequences. New content is published monthly on the first Monday (going seven years strong!), and the editors have numerous podcasts available on SoundCloud under The WBT. Some recent works on the site include “For the Truth is Always Awake” by Mike McLaughlin, “On Orthodox Easter in Mariupol” by Shannon Huffman, several poems by Nidhi Agarwal, “Survivor’s Paradox” by Chris Oliver. All content is free to read online. Submissions are open year-round.
Hailing from Canada, Musicworks publishes three times per year with each issue featuring stories that dig deep into the experimental sound and practices of concert music, electronic music, improvisation, instrument making, avant jazz and pop music, around art, and interdisciplinary art involving music or sound. Musicworks explores innovative music and sound art from a variety of places and perspectives. Each volume includes a CD with tracks from the featured musicians, and the non-profit also runs an Electronic Music Composition Contest each year (closing November 30, 2022). This newest issue features violinist and composer Jessica Moss; a “musical repatriation” with Goombine, Marion Newman, and Jeremy Strachan; Tona Walt Ohama in conversation with Jesse Locke; and interdisciplinary artist Chole Alexandra Thompson in conversation with Sara Constant. The CD features ten tracks of new and rediscovered music from artists in the issue. Visit their website for subscription information, including discounts for students.
For 50 years, EVENT has published the very best in contemporary new poetry and prose as one of Western Canada’s longest-running literary magazines. EVENT welcomes submissions written in English from around the world and features emerging and established writers side-by-side. EVENT also prints commissioned illustrations alongside the writing, and each cover features the work of a British Columbia photographer. In its newest issue, readers can find Poetry by Marc Perez, Angela Hibbs, Joel Robert Ferguson, Janet Bartier, Gordon Taylor, Robbie Chesick, Sarah Lachmansingh, Matt Rader, Jonathan Focht, Lisa Baird, Gillian Wigmore Fellows, James Scoles, Martin Heavisides, Michaela Morrow; Fiction by MJ Malleck, Jen Currin; Non-Fiction by Sandy Pool, Tricia Dower, Jason Jobin; several reviews, and cover art, “Casa Wabi,” by Douglas Hampton (2022) with illustrations throughout by Nora Kelly.
The November 2022 of Poetry, the publication of the Poetry Foundation, includes numerous works by Will Alexander in the special feature “Will Alexander: Poet-As-Spectrometer” introduced by Johannes Göransson along with an interview of Alexander by Jenna Peng. Also included in this volume are works by Troy Osaki, C. Dale Young, Austin Araujo, Wingston González, Julian Randall, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Raquel Salas Rivera, Carl Phillips, Gabrielle Bates, Adam Wolfond, Liliana Ponce, Tina Chang, Torrin A. Greathouse, Tariq Luthun, and Taneum Bambrick. All content is free to read online in addition to many other poetry resources for readers, writers, and teachers.
Chelsea Manning’s astonishing new book README.txt: A Memoir reads like a spy novel of the highest order. Imagine John Le Carre or Graham Greene at their best, and you will get a sense of how good the memoir is.
As Ernest Hemingway writes, “A writer’s job is to tell the truth.” Manning seems to follow this credo throughout her gripping memoir. Rich in detail, Manning examines her life through multiple lenses: from the lens of a lost trans kid in Oklahoma, from the lens of a talented Army operative analyzing war, and from the lens of a person entirely disenchanted with the horrors she witnesses firsthand on the ground in Iraq.
As her story as an intelligence analyst unfolds, Manning decides to leak documents showing episodes in which the military kills innocent civilians in the Iraq war. Not only do the soldiers kill them; they celebrate it. This is the turning point, the denouement, of her life. It is her truthfulness and her inability to turn a blind eye to this inhumanity that leads to her undoing.
The documents she leaks expose the hideous underbelly of war and cast the U.S. government in a negative light. As a consequence, she endures the hell of a court martial and a lengthy imprisonment. She comes through it bruised but not broken. Though she says she is still unable to tell us many of the details of her experience, she tells us enough to paint a vivid picture of a whistleblower’s life, and the consequences of telling the truth. Her ultimate conclusion: “The U.S. intelligence community is in a very poor position to be trusted with protecting civil liberties while engaging in intelligence work.”
Manning’s book is a watershed and a gripping read.
The Gay & Lesbian Review / Worldwide (The G&LR) is a bimonthly magazine of history, culture, and politics targeting an educated readership of LGBT people and their allies, publishing essays in a wide range of disciplines as well as reviews of books, movies, and plays. The newest issue celebrates “50 years ago, a mental illness was abolished,” with essays “The Kerouac Century” by Hilary Holladay, “The Curious Case of Gordon Merrick” by Andrew Holleran, “Thom Gunn, A Poet on the Move” by Alfred Corn, “Rise and Fall of the Medical Model” by Vernon Rosario, “”The Vote That ‘Cured’ Millions” by Barbara Gittings, “Inside the APA’s Decision to Delist” by Lawrence Hartmann, and “How Psychiatrists Came Around” by Jack Dresher. The publication also includes a slew of reviews as well as poetry, opinions, correspondence, and cultural calendar info. Visit their site to read limited content as well as for subscription information.
Created by and for LGBTQ+ writers and readers, Foglifter Journal aims to continue the San Francisco Bay Area’s tradition of groundbreaking queer and trans writing, with an emphasis on publishing those multi-marginalized (BIPOC, youth, elders, and people with disabilities). Publishing biannually in print with features published online on a rolling basis, the newest issue (7.2) features works by George Abraham, David Aloi, Andy Bandyopadhyay, Keally Cieslik, Lydia Elias, Elliott Gish, Ira Goga, Rigoberto González, Chinedu Gospel, Edward Gunawan, William Hawkins, Gina Hay, Nora Hikari, Mika Judge, Wenmimareba Klobah Collins, Zoe Adrien Lapa, Angelina Luo, D. Keali’i MacKenzie, Vuyelwa Maluleke, Avra Margariti, Sadie McCarney, Leslie McIntosh, Stephen S. Mills, Mallory Muratore, Chelsie Blair Nunn, Troy Oko, Claire Oleson, Molly M. Pearson, Hernan De La Cruz Ramos, Nnadi Samuel, Danie Shokoohi, Sun Tzu-ping, Alex Vigue, Syd Vinyard, Ashley Wagner, Cassandra Whitaker, Nicholas Wong, and Simone Zapata.
Their website also includes The Queer Syllabus, edited by Wesley O. Cohen and Marisa Siegel. This is a joint project with The Rumpus that allows writers to nominate works for a new canon of queer literature. “When we identify our roots, when we point to the work that shaped us as writers and as people, we demonstrate that our stories are timeless, essential, and important—and so are we.”
In a wide-ranging conversation that headlines the newest issue, World Literature Todaycelebrates Ada Limón being named the 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. With this latest passport to great reading, the editors are also excited to launch an ambitious new editorial initiative to offer a greater number of shorter pieces to help further diversify the magazine’s coverage and facilitate reader engagement from a wider variety of cultural angles. Through literature, music, film, food, and art, WLT is finding more ways than ever to connect you to the global cultural landscape of the 21st century. This issue features fiction by Dacia Maraini and Alit Karp, poetry by Lea Nagy, Beth Piatote, Persis Karim, and Beau Beausoleil, essays by PL Henderson and Mónica Lavín, creative nonfiction by Lin Yi-Han and Philip Metres, as well as a Symposium on Octavio Paz and an interview with Xochitl Gonzalez, with lots more “mini” content as promised!
Happy November! Time to keep your submission goals going strong with our Where to Submit Round-up for the first week of November. And while we’re at it, don’t forget Sunday, November 6 is daylight savings time, so if you’re part of the country participates in this…you get to fall back an hour!
Want to get alerts for new opportunities sent directly to your inbox every Monday afternoon instead of waiting for our Friday Where to Submit Round-ups? For just $5 a month, you can get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today!
NewPages welcomes Olympe, a new online publication of global writing, visual art, and photography by women ages 16-24 that “describe the female experience and explore what women’s issues are relevant” to each contributor.
The concept for Olympe came about as a result of the Kravis Center for Performing Arts‘ “Changemakers: Global Women/Global Issues” workshop at the beginning of 2022. The editors got to know one another during this workshop while exploring women’s issues through lessons from Dr. Susan Gay Wemette where they created projects as a team. After that event, the team put what they had gained from those projects into creating Olympe as a way to bring awareness to women’s issues and amplify women’s voices as they share their stories through writing and art.
Fleas on the Dog is a collective of writers/editors publishing content for “those who are on the avant garde and outside the box,” with the newest issue (12) “dedicated to the Ukrainian saviours and the radical activist freedom loving spirits who have been so unjustly silenced by the monstrous machinery of petty, malevolent governments.” All content can be read for free online, and readers can find over seventy works of fiction, interviews, poetry, plays, and screenplays. The next issue is due in January 2023; no-fee submissions are open.
This We in the Back of the House Poetry by Jacob Sunderlin Saturnalia Books, October 2022
Winner of the Saturnalia Book Editors Prize, Jacob Sunderlin’s first book of poems is measured in long shifts, out of sight of customers, written out in bleach, cigarette butts, and cheers to that we who work in the back of the house. Poems written the way stock pots are scoured with steel wool, the way bricks are laid with violent precision and exhausted resignation. These poems were dreamed by a head stuck inside a cement mixer, drunk on the language of work and the spoken we language creates. This is not the romanticized imaginary “Midwest” exploited by cynical politicians but a lyrical and even occult working-class landscape. Its we is made gentle by listening, by being in garages with apple-juice jugs of antifreeze underneath a sky hazed by contrails in the shape of Randy Savage and bootlegged diamonds of anti-helicopter lights while Appetite for Destruction whispers from a pile of burning leaves. This we is made of brothers, of the teenage bricklayer scamming free nuggets from Mickey Dees. These poems are sharp but loving, spoken in the light of a Coleman lantern from a boombox spread out on a blanket down by a river Monsanto owns. This we rides in a 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air left parked out in a shed, windows half-down.
reading’s at a loss for punctual and capital in abraham smith’s 125-page Insomniac Sentinel so’s that the rarely contractions and possessions make em half known
each poem puts on a voice that’s not his self’s but’s still his own, like “Hoodwink Aubade” leans on a big stick to jaw about u.s. gun culture’s manliest ideas
the enjambments leave “a black eye / everywhere on the body” & insist asking how’s the commonplace meet divine as “god does / teeth to babies”
you start to notion how well organized & awake verge on disorder maybe or past it
it’s often we see little how “we / are one musical family” yet the book stays awake & ever watchful over tercet-storied dialects interjecting bits of punt nonce scents and elide how endings end in ing
that hurts to watch if you’re not so careful as him
here’s then tales to hand stories over to unspeaking & such fanciful finds we earn in the barest sense of the word
enough to veil up a skyfull of featheries
there’s cranes or crayons to keep color in the clouds run through all the pages
you’ll see for yourself if you’ve the patience & alertness
Reviewer bio: Nicholas Michael Ravnikar is a disabled neurodivergent writer, artist & critic who lives in southeast Wisconsin. He once ate peanut butter off a landline. It’s a long story. A father and spouse, he enjoys lifting weights, yoga, and meditation in his spare time. Connect with him on social media and download free books at bio.fm/[email protected]
The Common, the award-winning literary magazine based in Amherst, MA, is opening its ninth annual Author Postcard Auction on November 7, 2022. Authors will write and send postcards in time for the holidays! This unique online auction gives book lovers from around the world the opportunity to bid on handwritten, personalized postcards from their favorite writers. The Common, whose mission is to deepen society’s sense of place through literature and nurture the careers of new and international writers, is directly benefited by proceeds from the auction. They support payment to and mentorship of emerging authors as well as The Common’s post-grad editorial fellowship.
2022 Postcard Auction Authors: Rumaan Alam, Rabih Alameddine, Gina Apostol, Christina Baker Kline, Alison Bechdel, Matt Bell, Alexander Chee, Tara Conklin, Jennifer Croft, Edwidge Danticat, Anthony Doerr, Esi Edugyan, Jennifer Egan, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Craig Finn, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, Andrew Sean Greer, Lauren Groff, Joe Hill, Leslie Jamison, Hari Kunzru, Fran Lebowitz, Min Jin Lee, Megha Majumdar, Elizabeth McCracken, Natalie Merchant, Claire Messud, Christopher Moore, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tommy Orange, Julie Otsuka, R. J. Palacio, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Safran Foer, George Saunders, David Sedaris, Jim and Karen Shepard, Amanda Shires, Lynn Steger Strong, Elizabeth Strout, Donna Tartt, Jeff Tweedy, Anne Tyler, Claire Vaye Watkins, Chris Ware.
