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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!

Book Review :: Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Throughout Mengestu’s writing career, he has created characters who have trouble connecting with others, who have some sort of distance from others and themselves. Usually, that breakdown in relationships comes from their lack of recognition of the trauma they’ve suffered, frequently from their experience as refugees or immigrants.

Someone Like Us, his latest novel is no different, as he tells the story of Mamush, a journalist living in Paris with his wife Hannah, with whom he has a young son. However, Mamush spends almost the entire novel traveling to Washington, DC, where he grew up, reflecting on his life with his mother and Samuel, a father figure who might also be his father.

Mamush and Hannah’s marriage is on the verge of collapsing. Their son suffers from some ailment that has sapped his energy and seems to be taking his life from him. Whenever Mamush leaves home, Hannah wonders if he will come back. Similarly, Mamush’s career as a journalist has effectively ended. He became known for writing stories about immigrants from Africa, but those stories were always about tragedies that happened to them, not successes they had.

Samuel and Mamush’s mother have a complicated past that involves living in Europe, as well as Chicago, where they both were arrested, before moving to Washington, DC. However, neither of them will talk about it, and Mamush is unable to discover what happened. Like Mamush, Samuel seems incapable of building true relationships.

Near the end of the novel, Mengestu merges the past and present, questioning even the reliability of the story Mamush and Samuel have been telling. When one has been through trauma, stories become unreliable, but they also become the only thing one has to hold onto. Mengestu gives the reader one more such story, leaving it open to the reader to find hope in the midst of loss.

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu. Alfred A. Knopf, July 2024.

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

Book Review :: US Constitution 101 by Tom Richey and Peter Paccone

US Constitution 101 by Tom Richey and Peter Paccone book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

In US Constitution 101: From the Bill of Rights to the Judicial Branch, Everything You Need to Know about the Constitution of the United States, authors Richey and Paccone, both teachers, provide readers with a concise, anecdotally rich account of how America’s most foundational document evolved to become “the world’s oldest, functioning written Constitution.” Influenced by Hammurabi’s Code in Mesopotamia, the Greek system of demokratia, and the European Magna Carta, US founders struggled to create unity among the original 13 colonies while simultaneously granting each locale some autonomy. This pattern persists today (seen, for example, in the diverse state abortion laws that followed the 2022 Dobbs decision and in policies that govern the voting rights of convicted felons.)

Eighteenth-century contention is writ large throughout the book – regarding immigration, slavery, women’s suffrage, taxation, and declarations of war — and showcases the compromises and concessions of James Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. Moreover, tensions over ratification of the newly-drawn Constitution, which required approval by nine states, are palpably reported and readers become privy to arguments between those who favored federal cohesion and those who favored state’s rights. Accommodation, Richey and Paccone write, “to ensure that none of the branches of government can gain a decisive advantage over the others,” led to a bicameral legislature, with strict policies regarding Presidential veto power and the appointment of federal judges, cabinet members, and ambassadors.

In addition, coverage of church-state separation, freedom of speech and assembly, prior restraint of media, and gun rights give the book added heft and contemporary relevance. What’s more, a smattering of fun facts enliven the prose: Readers learn that gerrymandering, for one, is named for Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, whose administration created a salamander-shaped district that critics dubbed the gerrymander. Who knew?

US Constitution 101 is an entertaining and extremely-readable resource, a guide to US governance for middle school and older readers. It answers a host of questions and explains the rationale for the state-by-state patchwork that makes many policies both complex and varied.

US Constitution 101: From the Bill of Rights to the Judicial Branch, Everything You Need to Know about the Constitution of the United States by Tom Richey and Peter Paccone. Adams Media, Simon & Schuster, September, 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Where to Submit Roundup: September 27, 2024

Where to Submit banner for 2024

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

Happy Friday! Welcome to the last roundup of submission opportunities for September 2024. It’s been a long, crazy week hasn’t it? Hopefully you are all staying safe and sound this week. If you have plans to stay indoors and write, edit, and submit, we are here to help! There are many opportunities with September 30 and October 1 deadlines.

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. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: September 27, 2024”

New Book :: Just YA: Short Poems, Stories, & Essays

Just YA: Short Poems, Stories, & Essays book cover image

Just YA: Short Poems, Essays, & Fiction for Grades 7-12
Seela Books, September 2024

Just YA: Short Poems, Essays, & Fiction is a powerful collection of literature celebrating the diverse and dynamic experiences of contemporary youth. This open-access anthology features short texts that can be read in a single class period and are designed to spark deep conversations. Organized around themes of identity, love, place, justice, and the future, these works offer inclusive and affirming perspectives. With contributions from  acclaimed young adult authors, flash fiction writers, and teacher-poets, Just YA provides educators with contemporary texts that resonate with and inspire today’s students. All content is freely available online, encouraging widespread access and use, including 50 pages of instructional materials for teachers.

Contributors include Kristin Bartley Lenz, Tamara Belko, Joe Bisicchia, Stefani Boutelier, Taylor Byas, Dana Claire, Mary E. Cronin, Chris Crowe, Kacie Day, Sarah J. Donovan, Carlos Greaves, Zetta Elliott, Federico Erebia, Kennedy Essmiller, Jen Ferguson, Glenda Funk, Hope Goodearl, Jennifer Guyor Jowett, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Christine Hartman Derr, Melissa Heaton, Rajpreet Heir, Jamie Jo Hoang, Julia Horton, Val Howlett, Valerie Hunter, Stacey Joy, Shih-Li Kow, Laura Kumicz, Sandra Marchetti, Lee Martin, S Maxfield, Jonathon Medeiros, Linda Mitchell, Alana Mondschein, Erin Murphy, Aimee Parkison, Alicia Partnoy, Sonia Patel, Darius Phelps, Brittany Saulnier, David Schaafsma, Laura Shovan, Kate Sjostrom, S., Samuel Stinson, Rachel Toalson, Padma Venkatraman, Karen J Weyant, Kayla Whaley, Emanuel Xavier, Aida Zilelian, and Laura Zucca-Scott.

A free digital version is available at www.ethicalela.com/store

Book Review :: fox woman get out! by India Lena González

fox woman get out! by India Lena González book cover image

India Lena González’s debut fox woman get out! is a poetry collection of “restless mourning,” seeking a “salve” to the “stopping up [of] spirit.”

What has stopped up the poet’s spirit has to do with America and the country’s sociocultural demands that she prove “where to place [her]self” and perform her identity as una parda, one of “the mixed bloods whose ancestries could almost never be accurately described.” The poet turns those demands on their head and acts out an exorcism of the “gold-toothed hag that is America” instead.

To “rez rrrrr e k t” herself, González uses drama-based and poetic intervention. First, the poet calls to be “heard out.” This reader willingly took my seat in the “audience.” Second, the poet calls in her matriarchal and patriarchal ancestors—her “planets”—to guide and help her “get [her] words right” for both her and her family. Third, she tears herself “wide open,” “showing [her] wounds.”

As the scenes of what González calls her “magnum opus” unfold, she seeks to “beat the / out-west-fragility” and the “being-a-woman business” “out of” herself, thereby “wash[ing] the beasts off” and “shaking [off] the trauma.” According to González’s healing wisdom, if there is to be “beginning again,” “first the old must go out.”

Yet, one of the remnants of “the old” may linger, revealing itself in the poet’s “assuming” that “reader(s)” would get “lost” in Fox Woman’s cosmos or be suspicious of her “big A” authenticity. This reader wondered if this “assuming” was evidence of anxiety about being accepted and therefore ongoing trauma. America may not change, but the poet does. This reader followed “sparks of divinity” as India Lena González gave “birth” to her words on the page, “building” and “shaping anew // world.”

India Lena González’s fox woman get out! is medicine poetry.

fox woman get out! by India Lena González. BOA Editions, LTD, 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.

Sponsored :: New Book :: New Moon: Day One

cover of New Moon: Day One by Thanassis Valtinos

New Moon: Day One, Fiction by Thanassis Valtinos

Translated from the Greek by Jane Assimakopoulos and Stavros Deligiorgis

Laertes, September 2024

Set in a provincial capital, in the penultimate throes of the Greek Civil War, New Moon: Day One is semi-autobiographical, a tale of two protagonists on the brink of manhood. They speak in bluntly human tones, but in precincts that echo of death the impulse to life is declared.

The elements of a screenplay are recast by Valtinos as a novel. Interposed with bursts of dialogue, and reading like stage directions, intimate scenes alternate with a wide-screen view. Fade-outs, as blank pages, punctuate the whole. Though the gaze is that of a camera—of pristine detachment—the energy is propulsive. The thread of a breathless suspense is drawn through a complex collage. It seems to precisely catch the rhythm of human becoming.

“Thanassis Valtinos is a masterful storyteller who has vividly captured in his novels and short stories some of the most turbulent and tragic periods in Greece‘s recent history. In “New Moon” he tells a coming-of-age tale of two boys who struggle to deal with their emerging sexual impulses as they try to survive the brutalities of a vicious civil war. A searing story by Greece’s premier living novelist at the top of his game.”
—Nicholas Gage

Magazine Stand :: The Shore – Issue 23

The Shore Issue 23 cover image

The Shore Issue 23 welcomes in the coming shadows of autumn with an array of poems shifting and redefining darkness, forgetting and the unseen. Enjoy haunting new work by Abigail Cloud, Emma Bolden, Melissa Holm Shoemake, Kashawn Taylor, Dylan Harbison, Annabel Li, Cheryl Chen, Amy DeBellis, Matthew Wood, I Echo, Michael Boccardo, Brian Chan, Chris Brunk, Margaret Malochleb, Ash Bowen, Leia K Bradley, Taylor Hamann Los, Charles Hensler, Gus Peterson, Veronica Kornberg, Brooks Lampe, Marko Capoferri, Cam McGlynn, Guo Feifei, Sofia Bagdade, Jane Feinsod, Talia Pinzari, Mary McSharry, Christy Ku, Catherine Redford, Wren Donovan, Alix Perry, Stephanie Karas, Jeffrey Kingman, Vanessa Y Niu, Sara J Grossman, Yoda Olinyk, Robert L Penick and Cecelia Hagen with world-shifting art, including this issue’s cover image, by Emma Rockenbeck.

Book Review :: The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes

The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

The Alternatives—Caoilinn Hughes’s third novel—begins with four chapters that follow four sisters going about their daily lives. Those lives are disrupted when Olwin, the eldest, leaves her family in the middle of the night and goes missing. The rest of the novel focuses on the three sisters finding Olwin and having conversations—or avoiding conversations—about who they are and what they value, often through accusations as much as confessions.

Their parents died when they were teenagers, a death that shaped them all in quite different ways, offering readers at least one meaning of Hughes’s title. Olwin raises them after their parents’ deaths, which is partly why her disappearance bothers the other sisters even more than one might expect. Rather than simply finding out that she is still alive and doing well, for example, they all converge on her to have a sort of intervention. It’s during those moments in the novel when the reader finds out more about their childhood and their parents’ deaths, as they each view that time in their life differently, yet another meaning of the title.

Hughes’s structure mirrors the dramatic stakes of the novel by literally shifting into dramatic form. When the sisters have found Olwin, Hughes twice shifts to writing the novel as if it were a play, as they discover more about each other as they are now and how they view their pasts. Such an approach doesn’t lose the characters’ interior thoughts, though, as Hughes allows those thoughts to appear in what one would typically see as stage directions. As with life, Hughes doesn’t leave her characters with closure; instead, they try to forge some semblance of a life out of the struggles they all face. As we all do, they will do the best they can.

The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes. Riverhead Books, April 2024.

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

Book Reviews :: The Privateers by Josh Cowen

The Privateers by Josh Cowan book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

Michigan State University professor Josh Cowen’s The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers is a potent indictment of the role school vouchers play in undermining public education. It’s a timely, insightful, and enraging book.

Cowen reports that the push for vouchers – which enable children to attend private schools with public dollars – began in 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education was decided. Fearful of court-ordered school desegregation, a slew of white parents sought ways to keep their children out of mixed classrooms. They were soon aided by racist legislators and theorists, including economist Milton Friedman, who helped them strategize. As fears about public school safety ramped up, their efforts picked up speed with eleven states currently providing universal school vouchers to any family that wants them.

That number, Cowen writes, is likely to rise.

This, despite the program’s consistent failure to prepare kids for academic progress – as measured by standardized test scores. But low grades don’t faze voucher proponents, a deeply connected network of donors (the Bradley, DeVos, Koch, Walton, and Olin funds) that dovetail with conservative political groups (The Heritage Foundation and Manhattan Institute), grassroots community activists, and professors from prestigious universities. All favor privatized education as well as book bans, censored curricula, and the enactment of anti-LGBTQIA policies.

Cowen’s analysis of how vouchers have fed into this broader conservative agenda makes it essential reading for supporters of public education. If being forewarned allows us to be forearmed, The Privateers elucidates the many challenges ahead and suggests ways to successfully resist the right’s game plan.

The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers by Josh Cowen. Harvard Education Press, September, 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Magazine Stand :: New England Review – 45.3

New England Review Issue 45.3 cover image

Readers can get the newest copy of New England Review (45.3) to enjoy eclectic prose by Lindsay Hill, Jehanne Dubrow, Robert Stothart, and Mary Clark; provoking poetry by Temperance Aghamohammadi, Craig Morgan Teicher, Victoria Chang, and Michael Robins; a Celtic fairy tale about dreaming; translations from the Hindi and Spanish; cover art by Julia Soboleva, and much more. Visit the publication’s website for an online preview to access several works from the issue.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Real Americans by Rachel Khong

Real Americans by Rachel Khong book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Real Americans, Rachel Khong’s second novel, follows three generations, beginning with the middle one. The first section tells of Lily’s life as a second-generation Chinese immigrant, as she tries to make a life in New York. She has an unpaid internship and a stereotypically small apartment until she meets Matthew, a tall, handsome, extremely wealthy, white man, an encounter that changes their lives. They get married, and Lily gives birth to Nico, the focus of the second section of the book.

He grows up on an island off the coast of Washington State with only his mother, going by the name of Nick. While he loves his mother, he also longs to escape the claustrophobic life of the island, ultimately leading him to attend college at Yale, even though he doesn’t feel he fits in there. He also struggles with his identity, as his mother is of Chinese heritage and he can speak Chinese, but he looks as white as his father, including his blue eyes. He reconnects with his father and begins to learn why his mother left, leading him to try to understand who he truly is, so he can craft his own life.

The final section’s focus is on May, Nick’s grandmother, providing the reader with more background on the family, helping to explain the actions and reactions that have led to Nick’s life. Underneath the family dynamics—the core of the novel—there is a larger ethical question that the contemporary world will have to deal with in the coming years, though I don’t want to give that aspect of the novel away.

Even without that issue, Khong clearly explores how parents try to do what is best for their children, how children misunderstand those actions, how parents sometimes make mistakes, and how children sometimes forgive them and sometimes don’t.

Real Americans by Rachel Khong. Alfred A. Knopf, April 2024.

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

New Book :: Dreams the Stones Have

Dreams the Stones Have by David Chorlton book cover image

Dreams the Stones Have by David Chorlton
The Bitter Oleander Press, August 2024

This new book of poetry by David Chorlton continues his firm legacy as a great Southwestern poet whose current Arizona roots have established him in the deserts, the wildlife, and all its surprising vegetation revived after each year’s monsoon season. These poems bring a recognition of what’s been lost among all he loves and what he discovers each day as a kind of supplement to that loss.

Born in Austria in 1948, David Chorlton grew up in Manchester, close to rain and the northern English industrial zone. In his early 20s he went to live in Vienna and stayed for seven years before moving to Phoenix with his wife in 1978. In Arizona he has grown ever more fascinated by the desert and its wildlife. Much of his poetry has come to reflect his growing concern for the natural world. He now lives in Ahwatukee in Phoenix, within easy reach of South Mountain which dominates a 20,000 acre desert park within the city.

Book Review :: Whipsaw by Suzanne Frischkorn

Whipsaw by Suzanne Frischkorn book cover image

In her fourth collection, Whipsaw, Suzanne Frischkorn brings necessary attention to the profound vulnerabilities and strengths of women and girls in a dangerous “American landscape.” With “keys between … fingers in a parking lot,” Frischkorn’s poems confront male violence against females, and they indict a “sex-trafficker pedophile,” “frat boys [who] pick off freshmen girls,” and physical, sexual, and emotional forms of family and intimate partner abuse. In this landscape, “it’s all dire.”

Frischkorn’s speaker tells us she is daughter of a father who “tried to drown [her] in his bottle of sorrows” and a mother who “had no stint of empathy / for any living thing.” Under these circumstances, a reader may wonder, as one poem does, “what did sorrow ever do?” These poems assert that sorrow can prompt honest expression, different choices, and foster change. The daughter’s “greatest // achievement was to shatter / the dysfunction [of her] parents.”

Bad things happen to girls and women in the forest, but not in these poems. “This is not a fairy tale.” Hurrah! Instead, the forest offers “detail of light and shade,” where our speaker takes solace among trees, and where “Like Thoreau alone // in the distant woods [she] come[s] to her[self].”

Out of that recovery comes a desire “to pay tribute to the promise / of the future” which requires allegiance to both the “ancestral forest” and the next generation. Here is a poet who fights for her freedom, protests “deforest, // to develop,” and strives to be the “kind / of mother— / to gift [her] child / endurance and steady pace.”

In Whipsaw, Suzanne Frischkorn uses language to cut in two ways—beyond the imperiled and “beyond the veil.”

Whipsaw by Suzanne Frischkorn. Anhinga Press, April 2024.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.

Low-Cost Classes and a 2025 DIY Publicity Cohort

screenshot of Forest Avenue Press' October 2024 low-cost classes
click image to open flyer

Forest Avenue Press’s Liz Prato and Laura Stanfill are hosting two online classes in October about submissions and small presses. Each class costs $30. Forest Avenue is also beta testing a $100/month DIY Publicity Cohort for authors with 2025 books. See flyer on both programs which includes a link to sign up on our website.

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The 2024 Haiku Search is On Now!

screenshot of Haiku Crush's 2024 Haiku search flyer
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Deadline: November 30, 2024
Haiku Crush’s 4th annual international search for the best haiku is underway now! Entries for the 2024 search are now being accepted. $350 USD of honorariums will be awarded. Haiku Crush’s panel of judges will give a top award of $150 to the best of the best! Up to 50 winners will be published in this year’s anthology. Submit your four best haiku! View flyer for more info and a link to our website.

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2024 Permafrost Book Prize in Fiction

screenshot of the 2024 Permafrost Book Prize in Fiction flyer
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Deadline: October 1, 2024
Permafrost is very happy to announce Pulitzer Finalist and Alaskan author Eowyn Ivey as the final judge for this annual contest. Submissions in fiction may include novels, short story collections, or novella collections. More info can be found at our website and on our flyer.

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Todos Santos Writers Workshop: Come write with us this winter!

screenshot of the flyer for the 2025 Todos Santos Writers Workshop
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Registration Deadline: December 1, 2024
Based in the historic pueblo mágico of Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, TSWW offers workshops for writers at all levels. Written works are read and critiqued in a supportive, participatory setting, with one-on-one mentoring sessions. Special events include guest speakers, craft discussions, and Fiesta Night featuring regional food and music. Discount for NewPages applicants before October 15. View flyer for a link to our website and to learn more.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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The Colorado Authors League

Screenshot of the Colorado Authors League September 2024 new releases flyer
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The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors become members to: keep up with changes in the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing, gain greater visibility for their writing, join a group of like-minded people who love writing. View our flyer to see new releases by members and a link to our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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22nd Annual Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest – Last Call!

Screenshot of the 22nd Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest flyer
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Submit published or unpublished poems to the 22nd annual Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers and co-sponsored by Duotrope. We will award $3,500 for the best poem in any style and $3,500 for the best poem that rhymes or has a traditional style. The top 12 poems will be published online. Final judge: Michal ‘MJ’ Jones. Fee: $22 for 1-3 poems. View flyer for more information and a link to submit.

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Magazine Stand :: Alaska Quarterly Review – Summer/Fall 2024

Alaska Quarterly Review Summer/Fall 2024 cover image

Alaska Quarterly Review‘s annual summer and fall 2024 double issue marks a milestone as AQR’s 80th book-length edition! Its five stories, a collection of poems by forty-four poets, and eleven narrative essays on the themes of human-animal interactions and welfare provide exceptional content for readers to enjoy as they transition from one season into the next.

Featured writers include Josh Bell, Richard Chiappone, Lindsey Drager, Marc Bekoff, Ann Linder, Peter Balaam, Emily Raboteau , Nina McConigley, Kai Carlson-Wee, Derrick Austin, Daniel B. Summerhill, Jane Hirshfield, Maggie Smith, Todd Turnidge, Frank X. Gaspar, Kim Addonizio, Jenni Qi, Matt Donovan, Rebecca Foust, Dion O’Reilly, George Bilgere, Dean Rader, Dorianne Laux, Lisa Allen Ortiz, Donna Spruijt-Metz, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Ama Codjoe, Veronica Kornberg, Kelli Russell Agodon, Jamaica Baldwin, and so many more, with cover art photo by Marion Owen. See a full list of contributors on the publication’s website.

Where to Submit Roundup: September 20, 2024

Where to Submit banner for 2024

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

Happy Friday! After what feels like a super long and busy week, another weekend looms before us. If you have the time and energy, NewPages is here to help you along with your submissions and publication goals with our weekly submissions roundup.

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. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness. Speaking of which, our September 2024 eLitPak is now available!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: September 20, 2024”

New Book :: Words That Mend: The Transformative Power of Writing Poetry for Teachers, Students, and Community Wellbeing

Words That Mend: The Transformative Power of Writing Poetry for Teachers, Students, and Community Wellbeing book cover image

Words That Mend: The Transformative Power of Writing Poetry for Teachers, Students, and Community Wellbeing by Sarah J Donovan, et al.
Seela Books, September 2024

A compelling look at writing poetry as a powerful transformative agent to support teachers, their students, and community. Words That Mend includes practical ways for teachers to engage in poetry writing providing prompts, instructions, and invitations for teachers to nurture their writing lives. The authors candidly share their personal stories of trauma, pain, and loss, as well as incredible stories from the classrooms and community events. These teachers warmth and love for teaching emphasize that processing traumatic or tragic events through poetry writing has become a step toward recovery and rediscovering hope at a time when the teaching profession most needs it.

Additional authors include Jennifer Guyor Jowett, Denise Krebs, Tamara Belko, Barbara Edler, Wendy Everard, Kim Johnson, Leilya A. Pitre, and Margaret Simon.

Available for free in digital form at www.ethicalela.com/store

Book Review :: The Three Melissas by Nilan and Bowman

The Three Melissas: The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness by Diane Nilan and Diana Bowman book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that 30 percent of unhoused Americans are children and their caretakers. And while every school district is mandated by federal law to address the needs of kids living in shelters, doubled-or-tripled up, in cars, or on the streets, The Three Melissas underscores the learning challenges that result from housing precarity.

The Three Melissas: The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness, a self-help manual for those navigating extreme poverty, was written by long-time advocates Diane Nilan and Diana Bowman for the unhoused, but it centers on the experiences of three women named Melissa. One lost her home after fleeing domestic abuse, another was evicted after becoming too ill to work, and the third lost her home in a hurricane.

They’re a sympathetic trio, and this slim volume provides a firsthand account of how they’ve accessed school resources, shared space, and found nutritious food, seasonally appropriate clothing, culturally sensitive medical and psychiatric care, and permanent shelter. But unhoused individuals are not the only readers who will benefit from their strategies: Social workers, teachers, school administrators, medical staff, and other ‘helping professionals’ will get an up-close introduction to the indignities that follow the loss of a home and the difficulties of navigating often-callous bureaucracies. Complete with recommendations for lawmakers, The Three Melissas also suggest numerous policy shifts to benefit undomiciled families.

The Three Melissas: The Practical Guide to Surviving Family Homelessness by Diane Nilan and Diana Bowman. Charles Bruce Foundation, September 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Magazine Stand :: Blink-Ink – #57

Blink-Ink #57 cover image

“Summer Nights” is the them of Blink-Ink #57, apropos for this seasonal quarterly installment of the tiny, independent journal that always packs a big punch for readers. Submitting stories of “approximately 50 words,” writers in this issue help readers capture those beautiful and mysterious moments of summer: the stars, fireflies, sparks from campfires, a thousand points of light against the velvet dark, air as soft and warm as breath – both from long ago memories, recent encounters, or just creations from a writer’s mindscape of impossible dreams, or maybe yet to come to fruition.

Writers featured in this issue include Jennifer Mack, Angela James, Kendra Cardin, Katheryn Kulpa, Eileen M. Hector, Daryl Scroggins, Sarah Shum, Kathryn Silver-Harjo, Susan Israel, Cameron Vanderwerf, E.C. Traganas, Carolyn R. Russel, Emery Caroline Little, and many more, with cover art by Gemma Mathewson.

Note: Blink-Ink has announced that subscriptions rates will be increasing as of December 1, “so now is the time to save a few dollars and sign up or renew.” Who doesn’t love a bargain? And subscriptions are great for holiday gift giving!

Book Review :: Kursid Kids by Ronan Russell and Pat LaMarche

Kursid Kids by Ronan Russell book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

In Kursid Kids: Winter Turns [Book Two], the Kursid family are in a downward spiral. After breadwinner Koal loses his job, he, his wife, and three kids are evicted from their home. Despair forces them to take shelter in the woods, and as they try to evade the authorities something miraculous happens: a magic cat enters their lives and grants the two older kids special powers.

As a result, Winter, the oldest, can now morph between a human boy and a flying-swimming creature capable of hearing the area’s iron-handed ruler strategize about jailing the adults and breaking up the family. His sister, seven-year-old Pearl, has been given a different ability; to date, she has been able to warm even the coldest of hearts by a touch of her hand. But will this work on a greedy Magnate eager to make an example of the Kursids? It’s tense set-up and is left unresolved in this second of three intertwined books. (The first was released in 2022; the publication date of the third has not been disclosed.)

The books, written by a grandson and grandmother, weave a social justice fantasy into the harsh realities of class inequality. It’s a compassionate introduction to the day-to-day struggles of homeless families.

For readers 13 and older. All proceeds benefit the Homeless Remembrance Blanket Project.

Kursid Kids: Winter Turns [Book Two], Creative author, Ronan Russell; Technical author, Pat LaMarche, Illustrated by Aron Rook. Charles Bruce Foundation, September 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Book Review :: Glitter Road by January Gill O’Neil

Glitter Road by January Gill O'Neil book cover image

Review by Lauren Crawford

Glitter Road, January Gill O’Neil’s most recent poetry collection, is about change. The poems tell the story of a speaker entering new chapters in her life after the loss of her life partner. Part of that new chapter illustrates her adventures and the exploration of her new identity on new soil: The South.

So many Southern voices, cultures and influences fill these pages. There, change is everywhere: “Here’s the nadir of our suffering, which started in one place to end in another.” We are called to the attention of the South’s gruesome past with racism and division, and Gill does not shy away from braiding culture shock and a land littered with a violent history against a backdrop of Mississippi landscape, the river often speaking in metaphor to the possibilities of change, even for the South itself.

We also bear witness to the change in family; the speakers’ relationship with her young children, as well as another chance at romance with a new, budding love. O’Neil describes the Southern landscape as “A repository for memory preserving a shared moment as when two people have loved each other well the topography transforms, diverges over time, cleaves a clearer path to where it was always meant to go.” And what a gentle, intimate way of writing how to embrace change in an unfamiliar land, and perhaps even how to leave the door open for more.

Glitter Road by January Gill O’Neil. CavenKerry Press, February 2024.

Reviewer bio: Lauren Crawford holds an MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. A native of Houston, Texas, she is the recipient of the 2023 Willie Morris Award, a finalist for the 2024 Rash Award, third place winner of the 2024 Connecticut Poetry Award, and the second place winner of the 2020 Louisiana State Poetry Society Award. Her debut collection, Catch & Release, is forthcoming in 2025 with Cornerstone Press as part of the University of Wisconsin’s Portage Poetry Series. Her poetry has either appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Passengers Journal, The Appalachian Review, Prime Number Magazine, SoFloPoJo, The Florida Review, Red Ogre Review, Ponder Review, The Midwest Quarterly, THIMBLE, The Worcester Review, The Spectacle and elsewhere. Lauren currently teaches writing at the University of New Haven and serves as the assistant poetry editor for Alan Squire Publishing. Twitter @LaurenCraw4d

Sponsored :: New Book :: The Poet’s Guide to Publishing

cover of The Poet's Guide to Publishing by Katerina Stoykova

The Poet’s Guide to Publishing: How to Conceive, Arrange, Edit, Publish and Market a Book of Poetry, Nonfiction by Katerina Stoykova

McFarland, August 2024

This guide to publishing poetry is designed for the poet on a journey from facing a pile of poems to celebrating at a book launch. If you have been writing poetry for some time and have accumulated a volume of work, this guide is designed to meet you where you are in your book creation or publication process. It is organized into five sections to mimic the distinct phases of conceiving, arranging, editing, publishing, and promoting a poetry collection. Each section provides a mix of theoretical materials and practical assignments to demystify and ground the publication process.

Where to Submit Roundup: September 13, 2024

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

If you are superstitious and don’t want to tempt fate by going out on Friday the 13th, NewPages has plenty of reasons to keep you safe at home with our weekly submission opportunities roundup for the week of September 13, 2024.

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. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness. Speaking of which, our September eLitPak is slated for release next Wednesday!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: September 13, 2024”

Book Review :: American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin

American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

In American Scapegoat, Enzo Silon Surin’s second full-length collection of poetry, the poet writes from a weightiness of being a Haitian-born immigrant to America and the “weight of the wait” for the country to fully reckon with its history of violence and injustice.

“if you’re black, like me, and were born
mourning your rotations around the sun,
you’re a full breath closer to the grave.”

Enzo Silon Surin takes on the myth, ethos, and pathos of America in his poems, and he pulls no punches. Nor should he. There is necessity in bringing to language for readers what the Black body experiences “when / it is being / sized up.” What those persecuted “felt,” the manner of their deaths, whether bullets, rope, or a knee to the neck, must be told. The poet is “writing in the hope that you will care about [his] early / demise, enough to be moved by how often [he] find[s] [him]self on [his] / knees.

Parts “appeal,” testimony, “vigil,” and sermon, Enzo Silon Surin is “in search of something whole and tender.” He “rebel[s] against the Union / by putting” a “felt-tip” pen in his hands and making “black characters” live again in the movies and in our collective “memory.” Enzo Silon Surin writes their “name[s]” and claims his among poets.

American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin. Black Lawrence Press, May 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.

New Book :: 90 Ways of Community: Nurturing Safe & Inclusive Classrooms Writing One Poem at a Time

90 Ways of Community book cover image

90 Ways of Community: Nurturing Safe & Inclusive Classrooms Writing One Poem at a Time by Sarah J Donovan, Mo Daley, Maureen Young Ingram
Seela Books, September 2024

For writing poetry in grades 6-12, this indispensable resource guides teachers through a year-long journey of poetic engagement, fostering a safe and inclusive environment where every student feels valued and heard. Grounded in social emotional learning and trauma-informed pedagogy, the authors provide practical, adaptable lessons that seamlessly integrate poetry writing into any curriculum.

With a clear framework developed by experienced educators, 90 Ways of Community is designed for teachers at all levels, from novices to veterans. Each chapter begins with a heartfelt “Dear Teacher” letter, offering context and support, while thematic clusters of prompts inspire creativity and connection. The book covers a wide range of topics, from celebrating individuality to extending community and healing through poetic expression. The authors draw on real classroom experiences and the collective wisdom of a community of teacher-poets.

90 Ways of Community is more than a collection of prompts—it’s a roadmap to building a classroom culture where poetry becomes a vital tool for learning and growth. Join in nurturing the hearts and minds of students, one poem at a time.

A free digital version is available at www.ethicalela.com/store

New Lit on the Block :: Pictura Journal

Pictura Journal August 2024 cover image

Pictura Journal is a new online journal publishing poetry, prose, and visual artwork three times a year (April, August, December), with the editors favoring “concrete images and work grounded in a strong sense of place.” The journal’s name itself, says Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief Alicia Wright, comes from this same desire for story.

“I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of ‘image as narrative,’ and I wanted a name that made the same statement. I couldn’t tell you the first time I read the Latin phrase ut pictura poesis (and it would take some work for me to recall any more of the specifics of Ars Poetica), but when I was formulating the idea for the journal, ‘as is poetry, so is painting’ pointed directly at what I was aiming for. So: Pictura. I want to publish work that values the concrete image as a storytelling device, and artwork that fits well alongside it.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Pictura Journal”

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – September 2024

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviews logo image

The Lake September 2024 issue is now available online if you are looking for the best in contemporary poetry from new and established poets. This newest monthly installment features works by Ian Badcoe, Mark Belair, David Capps, Charlotte Cosgrove, Clive Donovan, Arvilla Fee, Lesley Caroline Friedman, Ann Heath, Chris Kinsey, Claire Scott, J. R. Solonche, and Jeffery Allen Tobin. Readers will also enjoy book reviews of Sarah Wimbush’s Strike and Ian Clarke’s Staying On. One Poem Reviews, which share a poem from a recently published collection, include works by Smitha Sehgal, Leslie Tate, and Angela Topping.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon

Dog and Monsters by Mark Haddon book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

The eight short stories in Dogs and Monsters, Mark Haddon’s latest collection, run the gamut between the touching and the creepy. Most are adaptations of well-known tales: The Myth of the Minotaur; The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells; Zeus’ granting of eternal life, but not eternal youth, to his daughter’s mortal lover; and the suffering of St. Anthony the Great, among them.

In this contemporary retelling, Haddon interrogates important themes including maternal love, sexuality, religious devotion, fear, the cruelty of teenagers, bias against the disabled, and lust.

“St. Brides Bay” introduces a divorced woman whose role in her daughter’s wedding brings up a series of what-ifs about her own partnership choices. It’s a poignant, stinging reflection on the road not taken. Similarly, “The Mother’s Story” addresses maternal love for a disabled son, a child who is scorned by his community and rejected by his father. Like the king’s wife in the story of the Minotaur, gossip about the child’s lineage persists, isolating the pair. Whether love is enough to sustain them remains an open question.

As the title suggests, dogs play a role in many of the tales. But they are not always humankind’s best friends. Indeed, the boundaries between humans and animals are often murky as they serve as both savior and antagonist.

Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon. Doubleday, October 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Where to Submit Roundup: September 6, 2024

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

It is September. Time for color changes, spooky season, and pumpkin spice. It also means that submissions are opening for autumn and winter issues of literary magazines. NewPages is here to help you find a home for your work with our weekly roundup.

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. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: September 6, 2024”

Editor’s Choice :: The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County

The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County by I.M. Aiken book cover image

The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County by I.M. Aiken
Flare Books / Catalyst Press, September 2024

Informing the storyline for The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County, I.M. Aiken worked on ambulances off and on since the 1980s, starting in the Boston area where she was born and raised. She served one tour in Iraq with the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and now lives in Vermont.

This novel is based on her 40 years of work in the paramedic field and centers on main character Alex Flynn. Following in the footsteps of their beloved Boston cop father, Alex trains as an EMT and spends years chasing emergencies in an ambulance. But the person Alex becomes is a far cry from the hero they signed up to be.

Over four decades in public safety, Alex encounters a changing America, where veterans are left to rot on streets, women are welcome in dangerous fields but abusers still walk free, and service providers are subjected to intense public scrutiny while being denied the resources they need. After moving from bustling Boston to small town Vermont, Alex discovers an escalating feud between emergency operators and must decide which to protect: their community or their legacy.

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

Magazine Stand :: 805 – August 2024

Chestnut Review Summer 2024 cover image

The online literary and art magazine 805 August 2024 offers readers one final glimpse of summer, on the cusp of fall, just as Margaret Lynch writes about cancer, “teetering between the joy of life and fear of death,” and debut poet Anna Han “pens the boundless possibilities that bloom in a child’s heart.” Readers can enjoy more poetry by Logan Foster, Lisa Loop, Alicia Rebecca Myers, Charlene Pierce, Ivy Raff, Ahrend Torrey; fiction by A.C. Langlois , Sherri Moshman-Paganos, Zach Keali’i Murphy; creative nonfiction by Angela Abbott, Paul Grussendorf, Kira Rosemarie, Olivia Wieland; and art by Jake Huang (cover art), Janina Karpinska, Lauren McGovern, Marsha Solomon, and Sabahat Ali Wani.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Magazine Stand :: Chestnut Review – Summer 2024

Chestnut Review Volume 6 Number 1, Summer 2024 cover

Chestnut Review’s Summer 2024 Issue ushers in a new season at the magazine, Volume Six, Year Six (6:1). Editor-in-Chief James Rawlings’ interview with Chestnut Review Chapbooks author, Javeria Hasnain (SIN), opens this issue with cover art by Jules Ostara whose wild and unpredictable, “Ink Flowers,” sets the scene for stubborn artists and writers.

Contributors also include writers Esther Ra, Beth Anstandig, Em Townsend, Elane Kim, Chiwenite Onyekwelu, Alvin Kathembe, Nikki Ummel, Iyanuoluwa Adenle, Adamu Yahuza Abdullahi, Audrey Gamache, Andrew Nickerson, Caroline Beuley, Chidera Solomon Anikpe, J. L. Bermúdez, and art by David Sheskin, Roger Camp, Anselmo Alliegro, and Charles Byrne.

Readers are immersed in work that examines tensions with family, forgiveness, queerness, religion, astronomy, grief, childhood, animals, gothic, natural spaces, city streets, girlhood, and—as always—humanity. Like the chestnut trees that persist, this summer issue values the stubborn belief in each individual’s own worth, in the art of their hands, eyes, and mind.

Book Review :: Listening to Mars by Sally Ashton

Listening to Mars by Sally Ashton book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

Sally Ashton’s fifth book Listening to Mars offers readers “thought experiments otherwise known as poems” while “trying to understand” the COVID-19 health crisis, which brought with it death, uncertainty, anxiety, social upheaval, and political protest. Across the globe, “People began to die” or were “separated” from their families while “shelves emptied” and “we were forced to watch the execution of an innocent man in slow motion, over and over.” In other words, “the really big tragedies [of] these days.”

Conjuring “The Dark Night of the Soul,” by St. John of the Cross, and “In a Dark Time,” by Theodore Roethke, Ashton endeavors to “make sense of a dark time” via a Sci-Fi space curiosity. Imagining life on Mars seems to offer artistic escape to the poet, while calling out billionaires’ plots for a “backup planet” bolsters the purpose of her expression. In the moon’s waxing “curve,” a welcomed companionship; the “Stay-at-home orders to ‘flatten the curve’” a source of “panic.” The poems centering on celestial spheres in the Milky Way Galaxy act like points on orbital planes beaming attention back to Earth. The gravity of the situation on Earth is inescapable.

Planetary health and human anguish are also suggested in Ashton’s go-to poetic forms: the monostich and prose paragraphs. The spacious singular lines and dense text blocks suggest the themes and thematic tensions of the poems. The monostiches enact isolation, alienation, and lacunae; prose poems evoke connection, extension, and protest (of form). The collection also includes haibun and “haiku-ish” expressions. These Japanese-derived forms offer lyric qualities adept at managing grief and important to balancing “present danger” in the poems. The “sad trombone” and “highs of panic” brightened by “glints of light.”

Ultimately, the poet seeks “words that make the world look like what it feels like.” In a dark time, Sally Ashton finds her “way with a pen.”

Listening to Mars by Sally Ashton. Cornerstone Press, February 2024.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.

New Magazines August 2024

Image by Belinda Cave from Pixabay side view of pages of a book

Literary magazines offer readers the newest in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, artwork, and hybrid forms both in print and online. Keep your reading fresh by checking out the New & Noted Literary & Alternative Magazine titles received here at NewPages.com!

Each month, we offer readers a round-up of new issues with content information for our featured publications. The newest in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, artwork, photography, media, contest winners, and so much more!

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!

[Image by Belinda Cave from Pixabay]

New Books August 2024

Pixabay image by go_see photograph of a woman lying in the grass holding a book above her face reading

Still plenty of time to enjoy summer reading. To help you achieve that goal, check out the August 2024 New Books Received. Each month we post the new and forthcoming titles NewPages has received from small, independent, university, and alternative presses as well as author-published titles.

If you are a follower of our blog or a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, you can see several of the titles we received featured. For publishers or authors looking to be featured on our blog and social media, please visit our FAQ page.

[Image by go_see from Pixabay]

Book Review :: The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota

The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

The main plot of The Spoiled Heart, Sunjeev Sahota’s latest novel, follows Nayan Olak as he campaigns for General Secretary of Unify, a British trade union he has been a member of since he began working. However, his campaign receives a stronger-than-expected challenge from Megha Sharma, a DEI officer who has worked there for roughly a year.

They represent two different approaches to race, though both are of Indian descent, largely due to their class differences: Nayan’s parents struggled financially, while Megha comes from inherited wealth, which she has chosen to turn her back on. Nayan wants Unify to be color-blind, to focus on all working people’s needs, regardless of race, while Megha believes that race and racism matter as much as class, if not more, leading the reader to explore the land-mined terrain of identity politics in a diverse Britain in the twenty-first century.

Further complicating Nayan’s life is the return of a writer he knew when they were children, Sajjan Dhanoa. They didn’t know each other well, and Sajjan left the area to go to college, rarely returning. In looking for an idea for a new book, Sajjan begins telling Nayan’s story, not only the campaign, but the death of Nayan’s mother and son in a purposeful fire at his parents’ store nearly twenty years before.

Nayan begins dating Helen and helping her son Brandon, though the reader ultimately discovers Helen, as well as Sajjan’s family, know more about Nayan’s losses than they’re saying. Because Sajjan narrates much of the story, relying on various people’s accounts, Sahota is also calling into question the validity of narrative, an idea reinforced through one of Megha and Nayan’s main confrontations. While the reader may understand exactly what happened, they won’t know exactly why, as even the characters are unsure of their motives, much like people in real life.

The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota. Viking, 2024.

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

Book Review :: The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools

The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools edited by Royel M. Johnson and Shaun R. Harper addresses the ways that the U.S. right-wing has distorted and manipulated facts about how history and culture are taught.

This thirteen-essay collection harkens back to 2019 when scholar Nikole Hannah Jones launched the 1619 Project, a multimedia effort highlighting enslaved people’s vital contributions to U.S. economic and social development.

Not everyone was pleased with this message and white conservatives and Christian nationalists wasted no time in attempting to mute its impact as an educational tool: Since January 2021, eighteen states have passed limits on public school teaching – pre-K to university level – about race and racism. Gender, gender identity, and ways to fight oppression have also captured attention – and have been similarly banned. In addition to legislative attacks, the backlash has spawned “parents’ rights” groups to oppose student exposure to Critical Race Theory (CRT) in their classrooms.

But why all this momentum?

As The Big Lie makes clear, few educators teach this material. Moreover, the anthology challenges the idea that lessons about race or gender are “divisive” and contests the notion that such topics cause white (and male) students to experience “reverse discrimination.” This anti-racist and pro-democracy perspective makes the book essential reading for activists, teachers, researchers, and students.

The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools edited by Royel M. Johnson and Shaun R. Harper. Harvard Education Press, September 2024.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Magazine Stand :: Salamander – 58

Salamander Issue 58 cover image

The Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Salamander (58) features fiction by Laton Carter, Jules Fitz Gerald, Amber Silverman, Casey Wiley, Lindsey Godfrey Eccles; creative nonfiction by Marin Sardy, Jannie Edwards, Kristin Ginger; an art portfolio by Stephanie Juanillo; and poetry by CD Eskilson, Amy Smith, Andrew Hemmert, Sonja Vitow, Michael Quattrone, Michael Beard, D. Dina Friedman, Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Bernadette Geyer, Cathlin Noonan, Sean Cho A., Caroline Kanner, Stephanie Yue Duhem, José A. Alcántara, Maria Surricchio, Nancy Lynée Woo, Aliyah Cotton, Sara Backer, Jennifer Stewart Miller, Veronica Kornberg, Sheree La Puma, Caylee Gardner, Ella Flores, Kathleen Winter, Ruth Hoberman, Lizzy Beck, Ann Keniston, Rob Macaisa Colgate, Christa Fairbrother, and Vera Kroms.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Where to Submit Roundup: August 30, 2024

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

Severe thunderstorms, power outages, oh my! It’s been a week. Strong storms blew in and took out power lines, trees, lawn furniture, signs, flags, and who knows what else? When you have nothing to do, what better way to while away the hours than writing and editing? With September and Labor Day around the corner don’t miss out on the end-of-August opportunities!

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. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: August 30, 2024”

Book Review :: Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce

Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce book cover image

Review by Jennifer Brough

Ecuadorian writer Gabriela Ponce’s debut Blood Red is a rush of a novel that charts a 38-year-old unnamed woman’s unravelling. She skates through a city full of drugs, sex, and friendship, desperate to avoid looming life-changing decisions and a skin-picking compulsion that has haunted her since childhood.

In the midst of a rocky divorce, the narrator flits between casual lovers. Her regular hook-up lives in a cave-like apartment, where the walls appear as muddied vines pulsing under peeling pink paint. As her inner conflict spirals, Ponce uses color to demonstrate the fracturing between the body’s boundaries, with the ‘softness’ of her character’s inner self (white) that threatens to spill over and against the world’s forceful, hardened outer shell (red). Pain and pleasure are a hair’s width apart, creating a discomforting middle ground when these opposites converge in sexual encounters, memories, and vivid hallucinations.

Booker delivers a seamless translation that sweeps us along in this vortex, effortlessly layering the narrator’s deceptive cynical tone with the fragile stream-of-consciousness underpinning it. Ponce pushes her character to the brink of a visceral internal void, leaving the reader akin to the narrator in ‘trying to embrace the untouchable or unnamable’ experience of this mercurial text.

Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce; Translated by Sarah Booker. Dead Ink, January 2024 (Restless Books, 2022).

Reviewer bio: Jennifer Brough is a slow writer and workshop facilitator. Her work has appeared in Ache Magazine, Eunoia Review, SICK Magazine, Artsy, Barren Magazine, among others. Jennifer is writing her first poetry pamphlet, Occult Pain and was shortlisted for the Disabled Poets Prize’s Best Single Poem 2023.

New Lit on the Block :: The Zinnia Anthology

The Zinnia Anthology logo image

In the symbolic language of flowers, the zinnia represents friendship, remembrance, and lasting affection, which is what inspired the name of a new online annual, The Zinnia Anthology. Here, readers can find short stories, poems, memoirs, and art focusing on human connections and relationships with each other outside of the romantic lens. “Specifically,” the editors note, “friendships and familial relationships that we often take for granted or easily overlook.” Indeed, the first issue, themed “Platonic Relationships” sets the tone of bringing marginalized issues to light and offers inspiration for readers to see their platonic relationships in a different light.

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: The Zinnia Anthology”

Magazine Stand :: World Literature Today – Sept/Oct 2024

World Literature Today September October 2024

World Literature Today September/October 2024 features Japanese Women Writers in the 21st Century. Such writers as Mieko Kawakami, Hitomi Kanehara, Hiroko Oyamada, and Coreco Hibino are profiled in the cover feature guest-edited by Rea Amit. Additional highlights include numerous interviews, including a Q&A with Turkish writer Elif Shafak; poetry from China, Ukraine, and the US; fiction from Kenya; and Alejandro Puyana on six “classic” and “upstart” literary debuts. Be sure to check out the latest must-read titles in WLT’s book review section—including new releases by Conceição Lima, Yoko Ogawa, and Salman Rushdie—and much more!

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Near Where the Blood Pools by Ben Terry

Near Where the Blood Pools by Ben Terry book cover image

Review by Elizabeth S. Wolf

I don’t always read front matter, but with Ben Terry’s Near Where the Blood Pools: A Novel in Verse, I’m glad I did. There’s a character list organized around Cephas, older brother to Hope, a young girl who disappears. The cast includes Memphis, a Seer; Church ladies; and a can of ashes. I was intrigued.

In the author’s note, Terry illustrates a span of roughly twelve years before and after Hope’s disappearance: Hope Exists — Losing Hope — Hope Gone — What Remains

Calling attention to the timeframe of each poem requires readers to mind where each speaker is along this path. In addition to Hope’s family, treasure hunters trawl old pig farms. Bones sing. Menfolk go to jail.

Terry is currently incarcerated; his poems about prison are pithy and authentic. The reader frequently stumbles over exquisite lines, such as: “Memphis parted his lips to speak / and from them poured coal / and ash and water and time.” And from Marl Mae: “Everything good gets taken. / That’s history straightening up / before the future arrives.”

In a novel in verse, the few words on each page must develop character, place, and plot. It’s a tall challenge. Ben Terry succeeds.

Near Where the Blood Pools by Ben Terry. Livingston Press, July 2024.

Elizabeth S. Wolf has published five books of poetry, most recently I Am From: Voices from the Mako House in Ghana (2023). Her chapbook Did You Know? was a 2018 Rattle prizewinner. Elizabeth’s poetry appears in multiple journals and anthologies and has received several Pushcart nominations.

Magazine Stand :: Allium – Summer 2024

Allium Summer 2024 logo image

The Summer 2024 issue of Allium is available for readers to enjoy online, opening with works by Featured Artist Jeanne Marie Beaumont, who works ‘principally in collage and assembly. Readers can take these final days of summer to savor fiction by De’Andre Holmes, Lily Swanson, Hayden Casey, Daniel Steinmetz, Tom Roth, Elise Swanson Ochoa, Odin Weller, Lori Cidylo, Alex Rawitz, Brad Dress, Louise Wilford, Steve Ives, J. D. Strunk, George Tyler, Maura Stanton, Eve Rayve, Amelia Dellos; nonfiction by Scott Hurd, Gail Tyson, Deja A. Smith, Chelsey Clammer, David Tippetts; and poetry by Grant Chemidlin, Amy Miller, William Orem, Arden Stockdell Geisler, Riane Bayne, Eric Ellis, Yana Kane, Aurora Bones, Banah Ghadbian, Alexandra Riseman, Justine Mercado, Sarah Brockhaus, Alex Schmidt, Jeremy Radin, Caroline Patterson, Monet Lewis, Kelly DuMar, Rosanne Singer, Frances Klein, Brendan Bense, Vanessa Ogle, Nathan Santiago, Jane Costain, and Alanna Shaikh.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: The Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman

The Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, Shechtman’s lengthy title and subtitle might make readers think they know what they’re getting when they open her book, but they would be mistaken. While the crossword puzzle is certainly one of Shechtman’s interests, there is much more going on here, for good and ill, depending on what readers are looking for.

If one wants the focus to remain on crossword puzzles, she has an interesting perspective, given that she published her first New York Times crossword puzzle when she was nineteen, and given that she is female. Despite the male-dominated landscape of the CrossWorld today, Shechtman points out several important women who helped shape the development of the puzzle. Similarly, she points out the continued sexism of that CrossWorld, not merely in the fact that most puzzle creators are male, but in the clues and solutions one would see.

If the reader is only looking for a book on crossword puzzles, though, they’ll be disappointed to find that Shechtman spends only about half the book, at best, on that area. Instead, she has written what she refers to near the end of the book as a “memoir wrapped in a cultural history.” The memoir aspect of this book centers around her struggles with anorexia, connecting that to her fascination with crossword puzzles. This part of the book also pulls heavily from feminist theoreticians and Freudian analysis, as Shechtman uses both of those approaches to understand who and how she is. Those sections might push a reader looking for a history of crossword puzzles.

That said, the combination largely works. Shechtman clearly lays out the connections between gender and crosswords and anorexia, helping readers to see how she puzzled her way through her life, in more ways than one.

The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle by Anna Shechtman. HarperOne, March 2024.

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