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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!

Where to Submit Roundup: October 27, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

Welcome to the last official Friday in October for 2023. November kicks off next week and that means there will be several new opportunities you can enjoy! For now, don’t forget about these submission opportunities below. Plus, since it will be November next week, don’t forget to check out our list of Writing Contests with November deadlines.

Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: October 27, 2023”

New Books October 2023

drawing of a bear reading a book while sitting on a stack of books

Welcome to the end of October! Hard to believe it is here already, isn’t it? With the ending of October comes our monthly breakdown of all the wonderful new and forthcoming titles that NewPages has received during the month. You can view the full list here.

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.

Still haven’t gone through the complete list from September yet? No worries. You can access the archive online here.

Magazine Stand :: Southern Humanities Review – 56.3

Southern Humanities Review Issue 56.3 cover image

Southern Humanities Review issue 56.3 features the 2023 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize winner, Samyak Shertok, and his poem “Mother Tongue: A Haunting.” Judge Joy Harjo also selected Hussain Ahmed and Shannan Mann as runners-up. Other finalists include Jessica Cohn, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, David Moolten, Jed Myers, Wesley Rothman, Melanie Tafejian, and Felicia Zamora. The rest of the issue is filled with nonfiction by Esinam Bediako and Amy Benson; fiction by Judith Dancoff, Emmett Knowlton, Nicole Simonsen, and Heather Swain; with cover art by André Masson. On October 19, 2023, Southern Humanities Review celebrated the tenth year of the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize at an event presented by the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art with the judge and winner in conversation.

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 :: Club Plum – 4.4

Club Plum online literary magazine logo image

Volume 4, Issue 4 of Club Plum opens the door to October for you to tiptoe inside and enjoy this “Literary Horror Issue.” Maybe the door is entry to a vulnerable memory or gives way to the horrors of a childhood home. Perhaps we will enter a shed and witness our father’s obsession, or come face-to-face with our obsession in the neighborhood bar. Half-dead birds flap around our grandmother, and hogs haunt us in the road. Sometimes, though, the haunting is soft and necessary, and we strain to listen lest we miss it as we desperately conjure our beloved ghosts. Other times, we need to let our ghosts float away like ships that we don’t recognize simply so we can go on. Dare to enter and enjoy Creative Nonfiction by Faune Albert and Ainsley Davis; Flash Nonfiction by Amy DeBellis; Flash Fiction by Mileva Anastasiadou, Daniel David Froid, Enrico Gilberti, Emily Ives-Keeler, John Kucera, and George Nevgodovskyy; Prose Poetry by Helen Stevens Chinitz, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, Jonny Shae Ransbottom, and Royal Rhodes; and Art by David Boyle, Thomas Riesner and Claudia Tong.

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.

New Book :: The Medieval Worlds of Neil Gaiman

The Medieval Worlds of Neil Gaiman: From Beowulf to Sleeping Beauty by Shiloh Carroll book cover image

The Medieval Worlds of Neil Gaiman: From Beowulf to Sleeping Beauty by Shiloh Carroll
University of Iowa Press, September 2023

Readers love to sink into Gaiman’s medieval worlds—but what makes them “medieval”? Shiloh Carroll offers an introduction to the idea of medievalism, how the literature and culture of the Middle Ages have been reinterpreted and repurposed over the centuries, and how the layers of interpretation have impacted Gaiman’s own use of medieval material. She examines influences from Norse mythology and Beowulf to medieval romances and fairy tales in order to expand readers’ understanding and appreciation of Gaiman’s work, as well as the rest of the medievalist films, TV shows, and books that are so popular today.

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 :: Bellevue Literary Review – Issue 45

Bellevue Literary Review 45 cover image

Bellevue Literary Review‘s latest issue (45) is on the theme of “Taking Care.” In the foreword, Poetry Editor Sarah M. Sala writes: “Three years since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, we continue to redefine what ‘taking care’ means for us as individuals but also as an interdependent collective. In this issue of BLR, readers will find a variety of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that explore the many facets of caregiving and how we care for one another, for ourselves, and for the world.” The issue features poetry by Richard Blanco, Jen Karetnick, and Jehanne Dubrow, fiction by Abby Seiff and Joy Guo, nonfiction by Sheree L. Greer and Eric Raymond, and many more talented writers. The evocative cover art is by Tatana Kellner.

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 :: Intaglio Daughters by Laynie Browne

Intaglio Daughters by Laynie Browne book cover image

Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson

Okay, these are weird poems, weird-in-a-good-way weird because they excite the imagination. Browne has taken Lyn Hejinian’s [alert: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry] poems and added her own two cents to them. She has not embellished them but taken a title and then riffed on it. Each poem ends with the title (which are phrases, mostly) changed around. This adds to the meaning and feeling of what Hejinian has done. It stretches the sense of things, as in “Language is as blind as sheep”:

It begins with,

Imbroglio daughters, imbroglio mind…

concluding with,

…Language unkind and steep

This adds to what Hejinian has built, and while these poems can be seen as collaborative, they use the found material of titles and transform them into sparkling jewels of poems, turning them luxurious and dazzling.

I don’t mind combing through these with the weight of mystery that comes with the territory of oblique writing like Language Poets are famous for, and away from which many, many poets run. These are poems to run to, towards the playfully topsy-turvy.

Intaglio Daughters by Laynie Browne. Ornithopter Press, September 2023.

Reviewer bio: Susan Kay Anderson lives in southwestern Oregon’s Umpqua River Basin. Her long poem “Man’s West Once” was selected for Barrow Street Journal’s “4 X 2 Project” and is included in Mezzanine (2019). Anderson also published Virginia Brautigan Aste’s memoir, Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast (2021).

New Book :: Read Me

Read Me: Selected Works by Holly Melgard book cover image

Read Me: Selected Works by Holly Melgard
Ugly Duckling Presse, September 2023

Holly Melgard’s Read Me gathers the tools necessary to make sense of contemporary problems so ubiquitous they seem too big to name. Spanning a multiplicity of genres, media, and tonal registers, this book surveys Holly Melgard’s formally experimental poetic works produced between 2008 and 2023, including sound poems, essays on poetics, and books that exploit print on demand to, for example, counterfeit money. In often wildly comic turns of thought, Melgard’s work cleaves personal agency from automated defaults by mapping trauma and technocracy from the inside out. From critical talks to fictional monologues, the poet translates into language the unremarkable torments of neoliberalization in the digital age.

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 :: Carve Magazine – Summer 2023

Carve Magazine Summer 2023 cover image

The Summer 2023 issue of Carve Magazine features short stories and interviews with Mary Grimm, Zeeva Bukai, Tobenna Nwosu, Ambata Kazi; new poetry from Barbara Tomash, James Davis, Isabel De Aguiar, and Paulette Guerin; and new nonfiction by Jeffrey Utzinger and Lauren Osborn. Additional features include Carve’s delightful “Decline/Accept,” in which an author previously declined by Carve but accepted elsewhere comments on the process along with Carve‘s reading committee and the publisher that accepted the work. “Harbor” by Kimberly Y. Liu is highlighted here. And, finally, “One to Watch” offers readers an excerpt from Take Creek, For Example by Chris Rugeley.

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.

New Book :: The Book of Merlin

The Book of Merlin translated by Larry Beckett book cover image

The Book of Merlin translated by Larry Beckett
Livingston Press, October 2023

Larry Beckett’s The Book of Merlin is the first translation of Merlin of the Wild’s complete works. How can the writings of a 6th-century poet/prophet speak to us moderns? Page after page of battles and death answer that most succinctly. This is not the Merlin with a wand that you grew up with. Translator Larry Beckett’s poetry ranges from songs, Song to the Siren, to blank sonnets, Songs and Sonnets, to the epic American Cycle, including Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, Amelia Earhart, and seven other book-length poems. His work Beat Poetry is a story of the poets and poetry of the fifties San Francisco renaissance. Beckett is currently working on a translation of Verlaine’s poetry.

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!

Book Review :: The Glass City by Jen Knox

The Glass City by Jen Knox book cover image

Guest Post by Ashley Holloway

Originally published in 2017, Jen Knox’s revised edition of The Glass City is a brilliant collection of seventeen stories that fluidly combine seemingly unrelated themes together in unexpected ways. In this futuristic-yet-timely collection, Knox highlights society’s overwhelming sense of entitlement and narcissistic tendencies and their relationship to our changing climate. Each story is a mirror thrust in our faces, urging us to get over our love affair with ourselves, reminding us that “people didn’t need to further distinguish themselves from nature.” With buildings collapsing from exhaustion, virtual races run at home on treadmills, terrorist attacks, never-ending snowstorms, and characters with extra layers of toes from food contamination, Mother Nature acts as an omnipotent protagonist throughout, serving her primitive justice as a warning to society for the perils of continuing along the same trajectory. However, like the art of Kintsugi, Knox leaves us with the thought that what was once broken can indeed be salvaged and transformed into something beautiful.

The Glass City & Other Stories by Jen Knox. Press Americana, September 2023 (re-release).

Reviewer bio: Ashley Holloway teaches healthcare leadership at Bow Valley College in Calgary, AB. She writes in a variety of genres with work appearing across Canada and the US and has co-authored three books. Ashley is an editor for Unleash Press and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

New Book :: Nadia

Nadia: A Novel by Christine Evans book cover image

Nadia: A Novel by Christine Evans
University of Iowa Press, September 2023

Nadia by Christine Evans moves between the competing perspectives of two survivors of the 1990s Balkan Wars who have escaped to London, only to discover that the war has followed them there. Nadia is a young refugee who just wants to forget the past—until Iggy starts temping at her London office. Afraid he may be a sniper from the war she fled, Nadia starts seeing threats everywhere, alongside unsettling visions of her lost girlfriend, Sanja. As her volatile connection with Iggy unravels, Nadia is forced to face the ethically shaky choices she made to escape the war, her survivor guilt, and her disavowed queer sexuality.

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!

Book Review :: What Just Happened by Richard Hell and Christopher Wool

What Just Happened by Richard Hell book cover image

Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson

Really, what just happened when I read this book of poems, scribble scrabble drawings, photographs of crows, essays, and a memoir/list? Do I finally realize why my friend Robert Christie (who was a musician) was so enamored by Richard Hell? Probably. Coming across this writer reminds me of all the things I loved about Robert and his wife, Denise, what is direct and plainspoken, what is unusual and gifted.

Hell references Bill Knott in poems, and this can tickle the funny bone in a way that is curioser and curiouser. We do get a sublime glimpse into Hell’s music life and see that it cannot be separated from his writing. Even his essays are sprinkled with pure poetic reverie, “For instance, Roy Orbison hummed like chauffeured teal.” (“Falling Asleep”) My goodness! This is genius territory, beware!

My favorite poem is “Poets,” as I have just never read what poets do and what poetry is expressed so profoundly:

what poets hope to have
their writing do is somehow
trick into being
all that time forgot

Forgetting you, we are certainly not, Richard Hell.

What Just Happened by Richard Hell with images by Christopher Wool. Winter Editions, June 2023.

Reviewer bio: Susan Kay Anderson lives in southwestern Oregon’s Umpqua River Basin. Her long poem “Man’s West Once” was selected for Barrow Street Journal’s “4 X 2 Project” and is included in Mezzanine (2019). Anderson also published Virginia Brautigan Aste’s memoir, Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast (2021).

October 2023 eLitPak :: NOMADartx Review Seeks Works on the Theme of “Clarity”

Screenshot of NOMADartx Review's clarity-themed call for submissions flyer
click image to open flyer

Deadline: Rolling
NOMADartx Review would love to see your interpretations on the theme of “clarity,” open to broad interpretation. Our cross-disciplinary online journal publishes one piece of visual art and one piece of writing (under 3500 words) monthly, and we like personal essays, paintings, poetry, photography, sketches, stories, and creative industry-specific articles. We especially welcome under-represented voices. Complete guidelines at 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.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

October 2023 eLitPak :: Stone Circle Review Open to Poetry

Screenshot of Stone Circle Review's call for poetry submissions in the NewPages October 2023 eLitPak
click image to open flyer

Deadline: Year-round
When deciding where to send your work, be sure to consider Stone Circle. Our response time is less than four weeks and it’s easy to submit. We publish a new poem each Saturday and Sunday on a website designed to foreground the poem on the page. We prefer poems containing beautifully strange imagery and language that avoid becoming impenetrable. Learn more at 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.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

October 2023 eLitPak – Two Writing Contest This Fall for Teens

Screenshot of Under the Madness Magazine's flyer for two teen writing contests this fall for teens
click image to open flyer

Deadline: November 30, 2023
Under the Madness Magazine is sponsoring two no-fee writing contests for teens this fall: a Street Poetry Contest (with a judge from Spain) and a Fiction Contest (with a judge from the United States). We’re also open for general submissions in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. View flyer or visit website 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.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

October 2023 eLitPak :: Submit to Midway Journal’s Action/Words Poetry Contest!

Screenshot of Midway Journal's flyer for the Action/Words Poetry Contest themed "To Gather"
click image to open flyer

Deadline: December 31
Our Action/Words Poetry Contest seeks submissions that call for, enact, reflect upon connections between poetry and praxis. Each fall, our team will select a verb to serve as the “action word”/theme for that year’s contest. This year, we have selected the verb “to gather.” We welcome writers to submit poems that respond directly or indirectly to this term. View flyer or visit our website for more information.

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.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

October 2023 eLitPak :: 2023 MAYDAY Prizes

Screenshot of MAYDAY's flyer for the 2023 MAYDAY Prizes
click image to open flyer

Deadline: November 1, 2023
The MAYDAY Prizes for Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction offer publication and cash awards in each category: first place $500, second place $250, third place $100. Submit a story, essay, or poetry micro-chapbook by November 1. Fiction judge: Alissa Hattman. Poetry judge: Sophia Terazawa. Editors will judge Creative Nonfiction. Entry fee: $20. All submissions considered for publication. More info at our website or view our full flyer.

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.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

October 2023 eLitPak :: Madville Halloween Sale – Award Winning Spooky Titles

Screenshot of Madville Publishing's flyer for their 2023 Halloween Sale
click image to open flyer

Halloween 20% off Sale with Coupon. Scan the code to get a discount on select spooky titles when you order direct from the website. No Evil Is Wide was honored as a distinguished favorite in the 2022 Big Book Awards. We include both editions in this Halloween Bundle. Also see the new GRAPHIC NOVEL version. All our spooky books are literary in nature but written for a grown-up audience. They make great Halloween treats for the adult readers in your life. View flyer for more information.

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.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

October 2023 eLitPak :: The RavensPerch: Adding Breath to Words

The RavensPerch flyer for the NewPages October 2023 eLitPak Newsletter

The RavensPerch is an online international literary and visual arts magazine. TRP is unique in that the platform brings the literary world together across generations: a home for adults, young adults and children. We publish poetry, fiction, nonfiction and visual art. We are interested in writing that makes us react. We even give you permission to break our hearts and make us ask for more. Visit 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.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

Magazine Stand :: The Missouri Review – Fall 2023

The Missouri Review Fall 2023 cover image

The Fall 2023 issue of The Missouri Review is themed “The Curious Past.” Inside, readers will find historical fiction by Aaron Gwyn, a consideration of Norman Mailer in his centennial year by Bill Barich, stories by Genevieve Abravanel, Richard Bausch, and Joana Pearson, essays from Gregory Martin and Peter LaSalle, and poems by Tin Fogdall, Catherine Pond, and Mike Schneider. Art features include “Maud Allan and the Price of Fame” and “Edward Hopper and the Art of Voyeurism” by Kristine Somerville. Reviews in this issue by Andrew Mulvania focus on poets in “Whose Life Is It, Anyway? Lives of the Poets and the Evolving Art of Biography.” Cover art by Jolene Lai, Sarah’s Secret, 2011, oil on canvas.

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: October 20, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

Happy Friday! Did you know that next week is already the final full week of October? Now that’s downright spooky. Hopefully you all are doing so much better than myself when it comes to submission goals this year as I am sitting at zero. If you are a bit behind and want to throw yourself into a fervor to hit your goals, NewPages has your back with our submission opportunities roundup for the week of October 20, 2023.

Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness. The October 2023 eLitPak was emailed to our current newsletter subscribers this past Wednesday.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: October 20, 2023”

Book Review :: Flare, Corona by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Flare, Corona by Jeannine Hall Gailey book cover image

Guest post by Jami Macarty

The coronae that flare in Flare, Corona, by Jeannine Hall Gailey, allude to solar explosions, coronavirus infections, cancer scare symptoms, and multiple sclerosis diagnosis. Put another way, the poems deal with exposure and contamination; after all, we “can only hold death at bay for so long.” Preoccupied with calamity, “downed planes, traffic accidents and plain old bad luck,” our narrator is “a person who looks for the dark side” and “can’t stop writing the apocalypse story over and over.” At least she has, and the poems benefit from, a sense of humor, dark though it may be. The collection reads like a survivor’s how-to manual for scenarios like a “zombie apocalypse” and “what to do when you get the diagnosis you may not survive.” Neither comedy nor gravity matter when the “truth is, there is no final secret, there is no formula to save us” from whatever “sudden instability” will cause our demise. Despite life’s supervillains and death’s close calls, Jeannine Hall Gailey is “dancing in the flames, arms raised high,” rejoicing in the “part of us radiant.”

Flare, Corona by Jeannine Hall Gailey. Boa Editions, Ltd., May 2023

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems appear. More at https://jamimacarty.com/

Magazine Stand :: Spoon River Poetry Review – Summer 2023

Spoon River Poetry Review Summer 2023 cover image

The Spoon River Poetry Review Summer 2023 issue is the perfect way to transition from one season to the next. In this issue, readers can enjoy the SRPR Illinois Poet Feature with poetry by Jose-Luis Moctezuma and an interview of the poet by Edgar Garcia; new poetry by Joanne Diaz and Jason Reblando, Romana Iorga, Brandon Krieg, Olivia Cronk, Oriette D’Angelo translated by Lupita Eyde-Tucker, and more; and the SRPR Review Essay “Exposure, Confinement, Haunting: Visual Poetry in the Twenty-First Century” by Joanne Diaz, who reviews books by Katy Didden (Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland), Sarah J. Sloat (Hotel Almighty), and Mai Der Vang (Yellow Rain). Cover art by Jade Nguyen.

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.

New Book :: Fierce Elegy

Fierce Elegy by Peter Gizzi book cover image

Fierce Elegy by Peter Gizzi
Wesleyan University Press, August 2023

Peter Gizzi has said that “the elegy is a mode that can transform a broken heart in a fierce world into a fierce heart in a broken world.” For Gizzi, ferocity can be reimagined as vulnerability, bravery, and discovery, a braiding of emotional and otherworldly depth, “a holding open.” In Gizzi’s voice joy and sorrow make a complex ecosystem. In their quest for a lyric reality, these poems remind us that elegy is lament but also—as it has been for centuries—a work of love.

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 :: The Apple Valley Review – Fall 2023

The Apple Valley Review Fall 2023 cover image

The Apple Valley Review Fall 2023 features flash fiction by Jackie Sabbagh and Scott F. Gandert; a short story by J. Malcolm Garcia; a novel excerpt by Philippe Forest (translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer); a memoir excerpt by Dato Turashvili (translated from the Georgian by Mary Childs with Lia Shartava and Elizabeth Scott Tervo); and poetry by Mickie Kennedy, Eric Roy, Nadja Küchenmeister (translated from the German by Aimee Chor), Vernon Mukumbi, Marty Krasney, Megan Willburn, Theodora Ziolkowski, and Lynne Knight. Cover artwork by German painter Karl Friedrich Lessing. The Apple Valley Review is an online literary journal established in 2005 and published in the spring and fall.

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 :: Baltimore Review – 2023 Print Annual

Baltimore Review 2023 print annual cover image

Baltimore Review 2023 print annual features the poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction published in the summer and fall 2022 and winter and spring 2023 online issues. The writers included in this annual print compilation are Deborah Allbritain, Matt Barrett, Heather Bartos, Michael Beard, Jared Beloff, Garrett Candrea, Allisa Cherry, Elizabeth J. Coleman, Brecht De Poortere, Sara Eddy, Sarah Elkins, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Adam Forrester, Kimberly Glanzman, Grace, James Gyure, Jared Hanson, Aiden Heung, Marcia L. Hurlow, Hilal Isler, Garret Keizer, Kael Knight, Lance Larsen, Karis Lee, Winshen Liu, Joshua Jones Lofflin, Charlene Logan, Rachael Lyon, Pete Mackey, Meg Robson Mahoney, Leah Mell, Michael Minassian, Abby E. Murray, Reuben Gelley Newman, Christopher Notarnicola, Donna Obeid, Jonathan Odell, Mikal Oness, Abigail Oswald, Susan Blackwell Ramsey, Frank Reilly, Emmy Ritchey, Cressida Blake Roe, Adrie Rose, Jennifer Saunders, ZG Tomaszewski, Devin S. Turk, Kirk Vanderbeek, Donna Vorreyer, Lydia Waites, Claire Walla, Kelly Weber, Jill Witty, Andy Young, Lucy Zhang, Alison Zheng, Huina Zheng, Katie M. Zeigler, and Jane Zwart. Copies of Baltimore Review print compilations can be ordered here.

New Lit on the Block :: Wyngraf

Wyngraf logo

If you’re the kind of reader who enjoys snuggling up with fantastical stories, Wyngraf is just the ticket! Wanting something “warm and welcoming and a little fantastical,” the editors took the name from wyngrāf, the Anglo-Saxon word meaning “wondrous grove.” True to its name, Wyngraf: A Magazine of Cozy Fantasy provides “a growing genre that focuses on community, personal relationships, and worlds that readers can get lost in.” Publishing twice per year with special editions, Wyngraf is available via paid digital download in wide distribution (Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Smashwords, etc.), and in print on Amazon.

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Wyngraf”

New Book :: Bjarki, Not Bjarki

Bjarki Not Bjarki by Matthew J. C. Clark book cover image

Bjarki, Not Bjarki: On Floorboards, Love, and Irreconcilable Differences by Matthew J. C. Clark
University of Iowa Press, January 2024

In Bjarki, Not Bjarki, Clark wants nothing less than to understand everything, to make the world a better place, for you and him to love each other, and to be okay. He desires all of this sincerely, desperately even, and at the same time, he proceeds with a light heart, playfully, with humor and awe. As Clark reports on the people and processes that transform the forest into your floor, he also ruminates on gift cards, crab rangoon, and Jean Claude Van Damme. He considers North American colonization, masculinity, the definition of disgusting, his own uncertain certainty. When the boards beneath our feet are so unstable, always expanding and cupping and contracting, how can we make sense of the world? What does it mean to know another person and to connect with them, especially in an increasingly polarized America?

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 :: Brilliant Flash Fiction – September 2023

Brilliant Flash Fiction September 2023 cover image

Brilliant Flash Fiction online quarterly for September 2023 opens with original flash fiction by Pamela Painter, “You Are Like Me,” followed by Sharon A. Pruchnik’s Kafkaesque and delightful “Extinct.” A fabulous Halloween story by Charles Rammelkamp, “Houdini Seance,” is must-read material, as well as Oumaima H’s long-titled story about learning to ride a bike. The September issue is all good, solid flash fiction by talented authors, and visitors to the website can find information about BFF‘s Pop-Up Writing Contest.

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.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week – October 16, 2023

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

The Healing Muse Fall 2023 cover image

Raoul P. Brosseau’s work, Le Protecteur, blends summer and fall on the newest cover of The Healing Muse: A Journal of Literary & Visual Art (Fall 2023) published by SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Center for Bioethics & Humanities.

Copper Nickel Fall 2023 cover image

Hailing from the University of Colorado, Denver, the fall 2023 issue of Copper Nickel features a collage of woven inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle bamboo paper, Hahnemuhle rice paper, beeswax, and artist tape entitled Charles, 2022 by Sarah Sense.

petrichor issue 23 cover image

Issue 23 of the online poetry journal petrichor is dedicated to the memory of Catherine Vidler and features the work of experimental writer and visual poet Andrew Brenza on the cover.

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.

New Book :: Furniture Music

Furniture Music by Gail Scott book cover image

Furniture Music by Gail Scott
Wave Books, October 2023

In Furniture Music, Montreal luminary Gail Scott chronicles her years in Lower Manhattan during the Obama era, in a community of poets at the junction between formally radical and political art. Immersing herself in a New York topography that includes St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the Bowery Poetry Club, Scott writes from a ‘Northern’ awareness that is both immediate and inquisitive, from Obama’s election to Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy. Here, readers are situated in conversations around citizenship, gender performance, class, race, feminism, and what it means to write now. Scott’s project is polyvocal, also resonating with the voices of a host of earlier writers and philosophers, notably, Gertrude Stein, Viktor Shklovsky, Walter Benjamin. The result is a staggering work of insight and hope during a critical time in American politics and art.

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!

New Book :: The Book

The Book by Mary Ruefle book cover image

The Book by Mary Ruefle
Wave Books, September 2023

Following the acclaimed Dunce, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes Mary Ruefle’s latest prose publication The Book. With the same curiosity found in Madness, Rack, and Honey and My Private Property, Ruefle’s prose here feels both omniscient and especially intimate. “It seems I believe in a bygone world though I no longer live there,” she writes. “Will I continue to read about all that is dusty?” In the spirit of friendship, Ruefle generously invites us to query ourselves as readers and thinkers in a world that will eventually endure without us.

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!

New Book :: mahogany

mahogany by Erica Lewis book cover image

mahogany by Erica Lewis
Wesleyan University Press, September 2023

mahogany takes its name from the dark wood prized for its durability, workability, and elegant look, and from the Diana Ross movie, whose theme song asks if what lies ahead is what you really want. This book is the third in a trilogy, and like the first two books, it is steeped in pop music. Each poem here takes its title from a line of a Diana Ross and The Supremes song, as well as songs from Diana Ross’ solo career. Short lines flow down the page like postmodern psalms, connecting dailyness to timelessness, merging the historical and the beloved through reverence for family, music, and the life we actually live. mahogany is a lament for the passing of time and unimaginable loss, and at the same time, it models the daily search for joy and the deep shine that can arise from the darkest times.

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!

Where to Submit Roundup: October 13, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

October is the kickoff off of spooky season, right? So how perfect that we get a Friday the 13th during this month? If you’re feeling superstitious, stay home and work on your submission goals. NewPages is has your back with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities.

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

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: October 13, 2023”

Magazine Stand :: Superpresent – Fall 2023

Superpresent Fall 2023 cover image

The latest issue of Superpresent (Vol 3 No 4 Fall 2023) is now available. The theme for this, our eleventh issue, was Naturally. The issue features artwork, poetry, prose, asemic writing, and even videos from across the globe.

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.

Sponsored :: New Book :: If It Comes to That

cover of If It Comes to That, Poems by Marc Frazier

If It Comes to That, Poems by Marc Frazier

Kelsay Books, September 2023

If It Comes to That is a collection that thoughtfully considers the human condition. The poet shares deep reflections on the creative spirit, on the archetypes that encapsulate our behaviors, and on our relationship with the natural world. One can’t help but see the connections that emerge while reading these poems—there are big questions of how we’re connected to the people who inspire us and the ways in which we’re tied to the past. However, these poems are also filled with the people who we touch simply and softly, hand to hand, finding a way through uncertain times.
—Aaron Lelito, Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Wild Roof Journal

New Book :: No Use Pretending

No Use Pretending by Thomas A. Dodson book cover image

No Use Pretending: Stories by Thomas A. Dodson
Iowa Short Fiction Award
University of Iowa Press, October 2023

The stories in No Use Pretending by Thomas A. Dodson encompass diverse genres, from ecologically informed realism to a Kafkaesque fairy tale, from fabulist “weird fiction” to an episode from The Odyssey that becomes a meditation on what distinguishes human beings from animals. These stories invite the reader to reconsider moral and ideological certainties, to take a fresh look at such issues as fracking and drone warfare. In one story, a petroleum engineer discovers that one of his wastewater wells may be causing earthquakes, and in another, the pilot of an Air Force drone seeks to reconcile his conflicting roles as protector and executioner, husband and soldier. The scientist and the serviceman are both presented with problems that have no easy or obvious solutions, situations that force them to confront the messy, compromising complexity of being human.

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 :: The Lake – October 2023

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviews logo image

The October issue of The Lake online poetry journal features Sarah Carleton, Lisa Delan, Julian Dobson, Erica Goss, Dianna MacKinnon Henning, Tom Kelly, Karen Luke, Todd Mercer, Liu Nian, J. R. Solonche, Sue Spiers, Thomas Reed Willemain. The Lake also offers reviews of Mike Lala’s The Unreal City, Xiao Yue Shan’s, then telling be the antidote, and Paul Mcdonald’s 60 Poems. “One Poem Reviews,” which offers readers one poem from a newly-released collection, features work by Alan Bern, Gram Joel Davies, J. D. Isip, and Diana Manole.

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.

New Book :: The Adorable Knife

The Adorable Knife by Jessica Prudy book cover image

The Adorable Knife: Poems by Jessica Purdy
Grey Book Press, August 2023

The Adorable Knife by Jessica Purdy is an intriguing poetry chapbook that explores the miniature crime scene creations of artist Frances Glessner Lee. In Purdy’s own words, “the poems are named after each ‘Nutshell,’ which are meticulously crafted crime scene dioramas meant to help police officers hone their observation skills. It is my intention to honor Frances Glessner Lee’s own attention to detail in crafting these, as well as to imagine possible ‘solutions’ by giving voice to the stories told in the crime scenes. In some of the poems, the speaker is the victim, and in some, the speaker could be the perpetrator. In still others, it is the poet’s voice speaking.” The chapbook, at the onset, quotes Frances Glessner Lee, “The investigator must bear in mind that he has a twofold responsibility—to clear the innocent as well as to expose the guilty. He is seeking only the facts—the Truth in a Nutshell.” (Contributed by Karen Poppy)

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 :: About Place Journal – October 2023

About Place Journal October 2023 cover image

As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “Maybe now, in this time when the myth of human exceptionalism has proven illusory, we will listen to intelligences other than our own, to kin. To get there, we may all need a new language to help us honor and be open to the beings who will teach us.” . . . In this issue of About Place, co-editors Nickole Brown and Erin Coughlin Hollowell gather work galvanized by this challenge. The result is an extraordinary chorus of writers and artists, each attempting to decenter our human story to speak not just about plants and animals but for them, bringing awareness to life beyond our human realm. Cover art by Rebecca Clark.

Sponsored :: New Book :: An Abundance of Caution

cover of An Abundance of Caution, a book by George Witte

An Abundance of Caution, Poetry by George Witte

Unbound Edition Press, May 2023

Distinguished by expert attention to image and phrase, line and sentence, rhythm and tone, George Witte’s An Abundance of Caution proves much more than a showcase of virtuoso technique. Witte’s formal skill lends voice and body to the crucial work of finding grace in a time marked by environmental crisis, global pandemic, and personal loss. His poems gain their depth and dimension from attentiveness to the lives of others, the details of the natural world, and the often-bewildering ways we live now. In lines both formal and free, these poems answer uncertainty with clarity, imagination, and compassion.

“The poet’s incredible attention to image, rhythm, and insistence upon the exact right word creates an incantatory sense of era-encapsulating collection of stylish, deftly composed poems.”–Kirkus Reviews

“These elegantly constructed poems about “each livid day” are definitely worth listening to.”–Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book Club Newsletter

“Visionary is what I would call the quality that enables these poems to know realities that exceed comprehension …”–H. L. Hix

“Witte’s poems find their way in, taking up residence in the mind and heart.”–David Yezzi

New Book :: Maximum Speed

Maximum Speed by Kevin Clouther book cover image

Maximum Speed: Stories by Kevin Clouther
Cornerstone Press, November 2023

Like Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Kevin Clouther’s Maximum Speed moves across time and point of view to dramatize youth’s aftershocks. The unifying presence in the lives of three characters is Billy, an apprentice drug dealer in South Florida. His improbable appearance twenty years after his death reconnects Nick, Andrea, and Jim with each other and with the shared secret of their past.

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 :: The Writing Disorder – Fall 2023

The Writing Disorder Fall 2023 cover image

The Fall 2023 issue of The Writing Disorder online literary journal remains true to its roots in publishing works that highlight the classic art of storytelling. This issue features fiction by Jessie Atkin, Tessa Case, Courtney Chatellier, R.A. Clarke, Ben Coppin, Jessica Hwang, Mary Means, Raymond Walker; poetry by Wayne-Daniel Berard, Elizabeth Crowell, James Iovino, Cynthia Pratt, CLS Sandoval, J.R. Solonche, Scott Waller; nonfiction by Deb DeBates, Maza Guzmán, Liza Martin, Chetan Sankar, and the magical work of Italian artist Delia Ciccarelli.

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.

New Book :: Hated for the Gods

Hated for the Gods by Sean Patrick Mulroy book cover image

Hated for the Gods by Sean Patrick Mulroy
Button Poetry, October 2023

Plaintive and joyous, sexy and ferocious—often all at once—Hated for the Gods is as much a call to action as it is a work of literature. Gorgeously rendered and skillfully constructed both to educate and inspire, Sean Patrick Mulroy’s poetry weaves together stories from his coming of age in the American South of the 1990s with the broader history of gay men in America. The result is a politically radical text that will leave you shocked with all you didn’t know about the history of queer people, and surprised by what you already knew but never could articulate. Winner of the 2020 Button Poetry Prize.

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!

Book Review :: Because I love you, I became war by Eileen R. Tabios

Because I love you, I become war Poems & Uncollected Poetics Prose by Eileen R. Tabios book cover image

Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson

The Glass Fire in Napa Valley, 2020 seems to have been a turning point for the extremely prolific poet, editor, novelist, and activist writer Eileen R. Tabios. She and her husband experienced the fire and subsequent evacuation, which was successful, except that part of her life’s work was lost. She lost whole archive entries; material that belonged inside protected library buildings in official archives and not in an outbuilding that burned. This book makes real the fact that Tabios felt strongly compelled, passionate, and driven to collect some of her rescued writings and preserve them in book form. She tackles this project with love of what she finds among the remains of her work and is saying that love is the war she is raging against loss. While published archives can be boring to read because we don’t have the original pamphlet, magazine, or lecture to enjoy, Tabios’ inventive poems are delightful. More than half of the book is a compilation of “Uncollected Poetics Prose” that expand the meaning of archive, leading readers to dream along within them. What is so magical about this collection is that we are not left hanging and lost in the dense material of this ambitious project; we are shown abundance and astounding imagination in what remains. This project is love.

Because I love you, I become war: Poems & Uncollected Poetics Prose by Eileen R. Tabios. Marsh Hawk Press, May 2023.

Reviewer bio: Susan Kay Anderson is a National Poetry Series finalist, Jovanovich Prize winner, and former Ragdale resident who lives in southwestern Oregon’s Umpqua River Basin. Her long poem “Man’s West Once” was selected for Barrow Street Journal’s “4 X 2 Project” and is included in her book of poems, Mezzanine (2019). Anderson also published Virginia Brautigan Aste’s memoir, Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast (2021). https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/susan_kay_anderson

Sponsored :: New Book :: Graveyard Dogs

cover of Jason Brightwell's poetry collection Graveyard Dogs

Graveyard Dogs, Poetry by Jason Brightwell

Kelsay Books, August 2023

Graveyard Dogs is a graceful descent into the dimension of loss and grief. We witness life reduced to dirt and gravestones. We see love pushed into the shadows with nowhere to go. Jason Brightwell is a masterful shepherd whose poems guide us through the many facets of death. There is beauty and elegance in mourning and on every page in this book. He shows us that life prevails through tar, rust, and blood. We remain—the ones that are left behind—still of stars and still of purpose.

New Book :: Dirt Songs

Dirt Songs by Kari Gunter-Seymour book cover image

Dirt Songs by Kari Gunter-Seymour
EastOver Press, February 2024

Ohio Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poems in Dirt Songs are full-throated, raw, deceptively simple, and rippling with candor, providing readers an insider’s lens into the larger questions surrounding the many aspects of Appalachian culture, including identity, the impact of poverty, generational afflictions, and the brunt of mainstream America’s skewed regard for the region. Throughout the book there is an overarching determination to endure, to be the last truth teller left standing, arm raised in solidarity with the land and its people. Dirt Songs does what journalists and mainstream media have failed to do: provide a uniquely intimate look at landscape and family generated from within Appalachia, recognizing that one story cannot accurately represent a region or its people.

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!

Where to Submit Roundup: October 6, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

October kicked off with sunshine and 80-degree temperatures here in Michigan. Now we are back to colder and rainy days. Definitely fall weather and it never seems to fail that when its time to harvest, the rains come. If you’re experiencing some gloomy weather, too, NewPages is here to brighten your day with our weekly submission roundup to help you find a home for your work.

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

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: October 6, 2023”

Sponsored :: New Book :: Michikusa House

cover of Emily Grandy's award-winning novel Michikusa House

Michikusa House, Novel by Emily Grandy

Homebound Publications, September 2023

Winner of the Landmark Prize for Fiction

Winona Heeley spent the last year of recovery from eating disorders in rural Japan, at Michikusa House, alongside one other full-time resident: Jun Nakashima. Like Winona, Jun was a recovering addict and college dropout. While they bonded over rituals of growing their own food and preparing meals, they changed each other’s lives by reconstructing long-held beliefs about shame, identity, and renewal.

But after Winona returns to her Midwest hometown, Jun vanishes.

Two years pass and Winona, seeking revival through gardening, accepts a job as a groundskeeper at a local cemetery…and begins searching for Jun Nakashima once more.