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NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Books :: For the Cook on Your List (Yourself Included)

Dining in Refugee Camps: The Art of Sahrawi Cooking
Cenando en los Campamentos de Refugiados: Un Libro De Cocina Saharaui
by Robin Kahn

From the publishers site: “A full-color, bilingual, collage journal that documents Robin Kahn’s month cooking with the women of the Western Sahara. As a guest artist selected to participate in ARTifariti 2009, Kahn stayed with Sahrawi families living in refugee camps in Algeria and in the desert of The Free Territories of the Western Sahara. There she created the collages for this publication by combining the sparse materials available locally with photos, recipes, histories and drawings. The result is a 50-page full-color journal that examines the art of Sahrawi food production: how kitchens are improvised, food is procured and prepared, and traditional recipes are innovated from UN rations and international aid. The book is a testament to the daily struggles of Sahrawi women whose role is to provide sustenance, fortitude and comfort inside a compromised society.”

Anita Shreve :: Literary Fiction is Written by Men

“A book editor once had the gall to tell the popular American novelist Anita Shreve that literary fiction is written by men. What women write is women’s fiction. Her retort started with Alice Munro and went on from there.”

…

“A large part of writing is daydreaming. We all do it,” says Shreve, who confesses to occasionally missing her exit when driving. “You are rehearsing a conversation you had last night, and you are going to change the dialogue a bit so it comes out right, or you imagine what you are going to say when you get home. The only difference with a writer is a writer loves the challenge of structure and crafting sentences.”

Read the rest Profile on Anita Shreve: “You don’t sit waiting for the muse to come” by Kate Taylor (Globe and Mail)

Film :: Little Town of Bethlehem

Little Town of Bethlehem is a groundbreaking new documentary that shares the gripping story of three men — a Palestinian Muslim, a Palestinian Christian, and an Israeli Jew — born into violence and willing to risk everything to bring an end to violence in their lifetime.

Sami Awad is a Palestinian Christian whose grandfather was killed in Jerusalem in 1948. Today he is the executive director of Holy Land Trust, a non-profit organization that promotes Palestinian independence through peaceful means. Yonatan Shapira is an Israeli Jew whose grandparents were Zionist settlers who witnessed the birth of the Israeli nation. Today he is an outspoken advocate for the nonviolent peace movement, both in his homeland and abroad. Ahmad Al’Azzeh is a Palestinian Muslim who has lived his entire life in the Azzeh refugee camp in Bethlehem. Today, Ahmad heads the nonviolence program at Holy Land Trust, where he trains others in the methods of peaceful activism.

Little Town of Bethlehem was produced by EthnoGraphic Media (EGM), an educational non-profit organization exploring the critical issues of our time. Copies of the film are available for half price through December. Screening copies with full screening kits are available for schools, churches, clubs, groups, or local theaters.

Memoir (and) on Pants on Fire

In her Editorial Board Chair’s Note to the newest issue (v3 n2) of Memoir (and), Claudia Sternbach comments on (re)reading Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes:

“But as popular as the life story of McCourt is, there are those who take issue with it. Those who question McCourt’s ability to recall in such great detail events which took place decades ago. How could he remember which of his brothers begged for berries or the look on his mother’s face when she had to plead for an egg or the head of a pig for her children to eat at Christmas.

“These are fair questions. If I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night or whether I recharged my cell phone this morning, how can a writer sit down at his desk and starting with words, build sentences, paragraphs, pages, and finally an entire life story like a bricklayer constructs a solid house? And would a reader trust the construction?

“We have been taken a few times, I’ll admit. Well-regarded memoirists have turned out to be not so honest. Their pants burst into flames and it makes news. But I believe it makes news because it is rare. For the most part I believe when people sit down to tell their story, they do their best to tell it with truth. Their truth. And that is the key. They are communicating to the reader what they remember. They are spilling out on the page those images and sounds they have carried with them their entire lives.”

Exactly.

Chad Walsh Poetry Prize Winner

Charles Wyatt of Nashville, Tennessee, is the 2010 winner of the Beloit Poetry Journal’s annual Chad Walsh Poetry Prize. The editors of the BPJ select on the basis of its excellence a poem or group of poems they have published in the calendar year to receive the award. This year’s choice is a group of poems from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens” that appeared in the Spring 2010 issue. The awarding of this year’s prize to Wyatt also gives the journal the opportunity to recognize the extraordinary body of his work it has published beginning in 1965.

I-90ers – Submit to Sean Thomas Dougherty

Sean Thomas Dougherty (Broken Hallelujahs, and Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line both from BOA Editions) will be the guest editor for Redactions: Poetry & Poetics issue 14 the I-90 Revolution. “It’s I-90 becuase I-90 runs the breadth of the country. It’s 3,099.07 miles long and runs from Boston to Seattle,” writes editory Tom Holmes. “…we are inviting people who live within 50 miles of I-90 to submit poems. Make sure you first read the I-90 Manifesto…then send in your poems that are written in the spirit of the I-90 Manifesto.” Non-I-90ers are also welcome to submit their works.

Open Minds Poetry Contest HM

The Fall 2010 issue of Open Minds Quarterly: Your Psychosocial Literary Journal includes the honorable mentions of the 2010 BrainStorm Poetry Contest. This is the eighth annual poetry contest for mental health consumers and include works by Catherine Martell, Eufemia Fantetti, Zan Bockes, Kate Flaherty, Anthony Chalk, Mark Murphy, E.V. Noechel, Brock Moore, Christopher Gaskins, Lisa Morris, Jerome Frank, Debrenee Adkisson, Gail Kroll, Diane Germano, Carla E. Anderton, Monika Lee, John Parsons, and Robin Barr Hill.

Pirate Talk or Mermalade

Put aside any expectations of swashbuckling that this title might inspire. Pirate Talk or Mermalade has its share of cutlasses, of peg legs, of sailors marooned on desert isles. But it is far from a typical pirate tale. Described as a “novel in voices,” the story is told entirely in dialogue. No quotation marks, no helpful tag lines (i.e. he said, she replied): each page is simply the conversation, with an indentation serving as the indication that the speaker has shifted. At first, I thought the “only dialogue” rule would limit the scope—where would the description be? The thought and reflection?—but within a few pages, it was apparent that Svoboda is a masterful writer and is no more constrained by this selection of form than a poet is constrained by composing a sonnet: the novel delights because of this rule, succeeds because of this confinement. Continue reading “Pirate Talk or Mermalade”

The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide

In his new book, The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist, John McNally gives an honest and highly informative account of his experiences in the writing/publishing industry. As he cautions his readers in the introduction entitled “The Writer’s Wonderland—Or: A Warning,” this book is not an instruction manual on how to write short stories, it’s not a place to seek writing prompts, and the author does not claim to have a formulaic answer to getting published. Rather, he explains: Continue reading “The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide”

Muted Lines from Someone Elses Memory

The mind is a smelly heap of compost comprising our greatest hopes, delusions and sexual fantasies about robots. We explain its function with analogies to computers or other machines, trying to impose a structure on a ghost. So when our bodies and minds start to fail, we panic. We grope about in the dark for a user's manual, a crossword puzzle or anti-depressant that will put our brains in the order that we suppose it should have. Seth Berg explores this dark space in his first book of poems, Muted Lines from Someone Else's Memory. Continue reading “Muted Lines from Someone Elses Memory”

God on the Rocks

For fans of Jane Gardam’s Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat, God on the Rocks, a 1978 Booker Prize finalist, will satisfy. As Gardam wrote in the November 20, 2010 Op-Ed article “Richard’s Glove, Kate’s Hand” (which gives an historical perspective to Kate and Prince William’s upcoming wedding), “In my novels I write about the ‘old world,’ my parents’ world, where people wore hats—and gloves.” But “the old world is not so far away from this one.” Therefore, this novel, set along the northern English coast in 1938, between the world wars, is not chronological but jumps back and forth between different characters’ perspectives and pasts. In a book both humorous and tragic, the reader has to read carefully to notice switches in perspective and Gardam’s parceling out of information during the unfolding of fully defined lives. Continue reading “God on the Rocks”

Indexical Elegies

I adore Coach House Books. The book design is smart, inventive, spot on. Poetry is clever, original, risky, inspiring. You want to go back to these books again and see them as if new each time you pick them up. You’re happy to give them to others, to show them off. You return to them as, and I am not exaggerating, a reason to keep going on. And on. A reason to read. A reason to write. A reason to believe in poetry. Even, maybe especially, when they are difficult (emotionally or intellectually or in a reader-ly way). Continue reading “Indexical Elegies”

The Patterns of Paper Monsters

Emma Rathbone’s debut novel The Patterns of Paper Monsters is about Jacob Higgins, an angry kid incarcerated in a juvenile detention center. But like any great book, this one can’t be reduced to its plot. Its magic lies in the sarcasm that drools from its narrator’s voice and in the beauty of the way that voice strings together language. Listen, as Jacob describes the crime that landed him in the JDC: Continue reading “The Patterns of Paper Monsters”

Please Take Me Off the Guest List

Please Take Me Off the Guest List is a collaboration between three people: Nick Zinner, of the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, provides the photographs; Zachary Lipez, of the band Freshkills, provides the essays; and Stacy Wakefield, former design director of Artforum, pulls it all together into a wonderfully designed object. It has already been noted elsewhere how rare it is for the book’s designer to have her name on the cover, but here it is earned. Zinner’s photographs and Wakefield’s design are the true highlights of this collection, which should appeal to anyone interested in book arts. Unfortunately, Lipez’s essays do not measure up to the quality of the photographs and the quality of the design elements. Continue reading “Please Take Me Off the Guest List”

Velleity’s Shade

This is the sixth volume in Saturnalia’s Artist/Collaboration Series. I am impressed by and grateful for publisher Henry Israeli’s commitment to making available the collaborative efforts of visual and literary artists. The books are beautifully conceived, designed, and composed, and they occupy a uniquely wonderful place in the world of small press poetry publications. Continue reading “Velleity’s Shade”

Skin, Inc.

Ellis’s collection of poems, Skin, Inc, is an aggressive book to say the least. It is a statement in itself. A statement that is different and powerful. The language coursing through the veins of this collection is raw, real, and full of earnest emotion. It is calm, yet aggressive. Strong, yet tamed. One poem that really sets the tone for the first portion of the book is “My Meter Is Percussive”: Continue reading “Skin, Inc.”

Sonnets

Can you pour new wine into old bottles? Well, if you are Camille Martin and the bottles are sonnets, the answer is an emphatic, "Yes." By her flexible use of the idea of the sonnet, Camille Martin has written a book that holds a pleasing balance of unity and variation. In the second sonnet, Martin seems to be speaking to the form as the beloved: Continue reading “Sonnets”

Narrative 30 Below Contest Winners

Narrative has named the finalists and winners for their 30 Below Contest 2010 (All entrants in the Contest were between the ages of eighteen and thirty.):

FIRST PRIZE
Kevin González – “Cerromar”

SECOND PRIZE
Jacob Powers – “Safety”

THIRD PRIZE
Erika Solomon – “Rules for Jews in Damascus”

FINALISTS
Caroline Arden
Stephanie DeOrio
Katharine Dion
Kelly Luce
Michael Nardone
Hannah Sarvasy
Samantha Shea
Douglas Silver
Cam Terwilliger
Jessica Wilson

The Fall 2010 Story Contest, with a $3,250 First Prize, a $1,500 Second Prize, a $750 Third Prize, and ten finalists receiving $100 each. Open to fiction and nonfiction. All entries will be considered for publication. Contest deadline: November 30, midnight, Pacific standard time.

Tupelo Press Recieves NEA Grant

Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, announced that Tupelo Press has been approved for a grant of $20,000 to support production, publication and promotion of thirteen exceptional books of poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction. Tupelo Press is one of 1,057 not-for-profit organizations recommended for a grant as part of the federal agency’s first round of fiscal year 2011 grants. In total, the Arts Endowment will distribute $26.68 million to support projects nationwide.

Glimmer Train September Fiction Open Winners :: 2010

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their September Fiction Open competition. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers for stories with a word count range between 2000 – 20,000. The next Fiction Open will take place in December. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Lydia Fitzpatrick [pictured] , of Brooklyn, NY, wins $2000 for “In a Library, in Saltillo.” Her story will be published in the Winter 2012 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Andrea Scrima, also of Berlin, Germany, wins $1000 for “Leaving Home.”

Third place: Brenden Wysocki, of Marina del Rey, CA, wins $600 for “A Dodgy Version.”

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

Short Story Award for New Writers Deadline: November 30

This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5000. No theme restrictions. Word count should not exceed 12,000. (All shorter lengths welcome.) Click here for complete guidelines.

Can Technology End Poverty?

The lead essay in the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Boston Review forum by Kentaro Toyama, Can Technology End Poverty?, is available full-text online with responses from Nicholas Negroponte, Dean Karlan, Ignacio Mas, Nathan Eagle, Jenny C. Aker, Christine Zhenwei Qiang, Evgeny Morozov, and Archon Fung and a final reply by Kentaro Toyama. The forum is also open to reader responses.

Free Tanka Teachers Guide

Offered as a free PDF download from the Modern English Tanka Press (MET Press), Tanka Teachers Guide contains primary materials and resources about tanka poetry which educators and students may copy without seeking permission (Creative Commons License).

Modern English Tanka Press is dedicated to tanka education and welcomes innovative uses of their print and online resources: “We want to facilitate the use of our publications to the maximum extent feasible by educators at every level of school and university studies. Educators, without individually seeking permission from the publisher, may use our publications, online digital editions and print editions, as primary or ancillary teaching resources.”

580 Split – 2010

An exciting issue, beginning with Daniel Backman’s front cover “architectonic collage” (“Oakland in Transit”). Backman’s collages, he explains in the note that opens the issue, “envision a city in a constant state of transformation” and exhibit “the themes that have traveled with me throughout my experience as an artist, a designer, and a city dweller.” Continue reading “580 Split – 2010”

The Allegheny Review – 2010

One can hardly believe that the astounding works within Allegheny Review’s 28th volume is all from undergraduates. The wording might be a bit self-consciously ornate; which can be put to youthful enthusiasm. However, there is an explosion of images and modifiers, working toward emotional complexity – the effort succeeds; entrancing, engaging and enchanting the reader. Continue reading “The Allegheny Review – 2010”

Arc Poetry Magazine – 2011

In “The lure of the gallery wall,” one of the excellent conversations in the Canadian Arc Poetry’s “Poet As Art Thief” issue, the poet John Barton says writing ekphrastic poetry is “a way to expand our world, especially as so much of 20th-century poetry seems overwhelmingly concerned with the self.”

Continue reading “Arc Poetry Magazine – 2011”

Cave Wall – Summer/Fall 2010

Cave Wall’s latest issue invites us, in Robert Bly’s poem “Flowers with Holes,” to “look for / The odd places / In each other / And write poems about them.” The issue begins with an editor’s note that describes the poems in this issue as endeavoring to “embody that quest to communicate what moves us most deeply.” The style of communication varies, from the narrative free verse poem “Kung Pao with You on the Anniversary of Your Suicide” by Elizabeth Volpe which communicates with a deceased friend through the poem, to Sara E. Lamer’s ode to decay, “Compost.” Continue reading “Cave Wall – Summer/Fall 2010”

The Evansville Review – 2010

Fine sonnets, formal verse, and modern poetry inhabit The Evansville Review. The covers of the mag feature a blue glossy finish framing a woman who is arching her back in front of some stained glass icons, it is very formal and a slightly theatrical painting, titled “Mariana of the Moated Grange” by Millais. Besides poetry, inside the elegant covers are eight pieces of short fiction and three items of nonfiction. The short fiction tends to have an other-worldly tension about it, a dreamy quality mirrored in the painting. Continue reading “The Evansville Review – 2010”

Limestone – 2009

The 2009 edition of Limestone is titled “Legacy Obscura,” which I assume is a reference to the “camera obscura,” a device used to project images onto a screen, which led to the invention of photography. It’s a relevant title. This issue is ripe with photography and other visual arts, as well as poems and stories that create verbal images of legacy. What is a legacy? Is it something we’re born with? Do we carry it with us? Editor Rebecca Beach says “what we are and what we will be hinges on our past.” This journal examines that past. The past is where we come from and informs the future. The speakers of these poems and stories share their personal memories, yet they are universal and timeless. Continue reading “Limestone – 2009”

Many Mountains Moving – 2010

Over the years, the publication calendar for Many Mountains Moving has seemed erratic and unpredictable, at best, yet it’s always worth waiting for. This issue features a special section of “ecopoetry,” with selections by two-dozen poets, followed by an “ecopiety essay”; the magazine’s flash fiction and poetry winners, runners up, and finalists from 2008 and 2009; 9 short stories; four nonfiction contributions; “mixed genre” work (flash fiction/prose poems) by two contributors; and a general section of poetry with the work of another dozen and a half poets, including several selections from Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi’s recent book of very fine translations of the work of Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku; and one review. Continue reading “Many Mountains Moving – 2010”

Mythium – 2010

Mythium is a journal that publishes poems, fiction, and nonfiction written by writers of color. Its mission is to celebrate the cultural voice. The content is as varied as there are ethnicities. From African American and Native American writers with violent and unjust ancestral histories, to more recent immigrants of Latin, Asian, and African heritage (and then some) looking to find a place in a new America, it’s natural to assume that this magazine is a collection of many voices and many stories. Some of the material is depressing. Some is hopeful. All of it is interesting. Continue reading “Mythium – 2010”

River Teeth – Fall 2010

An issue you can definitely sink your teeth into. “We finally have work by Phillip Lopate between our covers,” says editor Joe Mackall. Lopate’s “In Defense of the Essay Collection,” is preaching to the choir in some ways, River Teeth’s readers are already interested in the genre, as it is, after all, a journal of nonfiction narrative. But, it’s a great read nonetheless. Lopate is in good company. The 11 other essays in this issue are equally worthy of attention. Continue reading “River Teeth – Fall 2010”

roger – Spring 2010

If I have any complaint at all about roger, and I really only have one, it is that the wonderful translations by Anny Ballardini, Patrizia de Rachewiltz, and Jennifer Youngquist (of work by poets Paolo Ruffilli, Cesare Pavese, and Etienne Lero) do not include the originals and the contributors’ notes do not include the poets’ bios. It makes for good reading to find these well executed translations of poets I might not otherwise have an opportunity to read among the work of Jim Daniels, Sandra Kohler, Charles Harper Webb, and many other competent, though lesser known writers. But, I would like to be able to read the originals and to know something about the poets. Continue reading “roger – Spring 2010”

St. Petersburg Review – 2009

“Speaking the same language through literature” are the words spread in light gray block letters over a dark gray background on the cover of St. Petersburg Review. This publication is “independent and international”; it was founded and is headed by an American, Elizabeth Hodges. She has traveled to Russia numerous times and participated in several Summer Literary Seminars at St. Petersburg. Among the associate editors, staff and advisory board are many American-looking names, many who by their bios have traveled to or live in Russia. Others are native Russians or “citizens of the world.” Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2009”

Southern Poetry Review – 2010

One of poetry’s most useful, satisfying, and unique characteristics is the power to capture life’s small philosophical or metaphysical realities with a kind of precise, economical, focused – and uncanny – accuracy. These are the sorts of poems at which this small journal seems to excel. Poems that embody both physical and emotional immediacy. Masters of the art represented here include David Wagoner, Margaret Gibson, Carl Dennis, and Kelly Cherry, who are joined by more than two dozen others who clearly also excel in this arena. Continue reading “Southern Poetry Review – 2010”

The Immortality of Fairy Tales

“About 50 years ago, critics were predicting the death of the fairy tale. They declared it would fizzle away in the domain of kiddie literature, while publishers sanitized its ‘harmful’ effects. Academics, journalists and educators neglected it or considered it frivolous…” (Read the rest: Why Fairy Tales are Immortal by Jack Zipes from Globe and Mail.)

Poets Introducing Poets :: dg nanouk okpik

Poet Lore‘s Fall 2010 issue introduces the poems of native Alaskan dg nanouk okpik in their feature Poets Introducing Poets. Poet Lore Editors writer: “Nowhere are the effects of climate change more palpable than in the far North. Ms. okpik’s ritualistic narratives – steeped in Inuit folklore and sobered by the rudimentary predicaments of survival – conjure up a way of life as miraculous and endangered as the Arctic itself. In ‘Oil is a People,’ she writes: ‘I see the pipeline cracking, the Haul road / paved. I fall asleep as you are dancing / with the dead….’ Is this a vision? A warning? The eerie lines do what poetry does best: unsettle us with the truth – and maybe move us toward it.” Poet D. Nurkse introduces okpik’s poetry, of which 12 pieces featured.

Artistic Merits of Fictive Sex

What is Good Sex vs. Bad Sex writing in literary fiction? Is there even a “need” for fictive sex in this day and age?

“Nobody needs it anymore”, says Rhoda Koenig [co-founder, along with Auberon Waugh, of the Bad Sex Award]. “Not that long ago, people would read quality fiction (as well as, of course, lots of rubbish) to discover what actually went on during sex, how people did it. Virgins wanted information, and experienced people wanted inspiration. If you were too young or poor to buy pornography or instruction books and had to go to the library, it was a lot less embarrassing checking out Lady Chatterley than a sex manual.”

Read more: Bad Sex Please, We’re British: Can Fictive Sex Ever Have Artistic Merit? by Arifa Akbar for The Independent.