Home » NewPages Blog » Page 243

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!

2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Finalists

Judges Rilla Askew, Kyoko Mori, and Al Young have selected five books published in 2009 as finalists for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, America’s largest peer-juried prize for fiction. The nominees are Sherman Alexie for War Dances (Grove Press); Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna (Harper); Lorraine M. L

Literary Mystery Spot

A Murder and a Metaphor: Litkicks Mystery Spot #1 has been posted by Levi Asher on his blog, Literary Kicks. There is an aerial photo from 1924 for which Asher is taking reader’s guesses in identifying it. Here’ are some “hints”:

• You have definitely read this novel. It’s one of the most widely loved novels of all time.

• A person is killed, during one of the novel’s climactic scenes, by the forked road near the top right of the photo.

• The vast expanse in the photo’s center, which appears to be a work of geometric modern art, provides one of the novel’s central metaphors.

Though he has not given an exact deadline, Asher will not post any further comments on this until he decides reveals the answer. And, given the number, it seems this may be a recurring activity on his blog.

Job :: Editor Cleis Press

Cleis Press has an opening for an Editor to work in our Berkeley office. This is a senior position, reporting directly to co-Publishers Felice Newman and Frederique Delacoste. The successful candidate for this job is an experienced editor with 5+ years in trade publishing as an editor, project editor, managing editor, developmental editor, senior editor or acquisitions editor.

The Editor will manage the editorial and production process from manuscript to press:

Work with authors to shape projects and refine editorial content
Evaluate manuscripts and perform developmental editing as needed, collaborating with authors on changes in style, content and format of books
Copyedit 15+ books/year
Supervise freelance copyeditors and galley proofreaders
Coordinate production of new titles with freelance text designers
Write, copyedit or revise all major marketing collateral, such as back cover and catalog copy
Maintain high standards of literary excellence
Participate in our acquisitions team, evaluating book proposals and manuscripts

While acquisitions is not the main focus of this position, the Editor will have the opportunity to acquire up to 10 books/year, generating ideas, recruiting authors and developing content.

We are looking for a candidate with knowledge of the types of book we publish: literature, sexuality, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, erotica, fiction, human rights, inspiration, gift.

The successful candidate for this position will have excellent writing, editing and proofreading skills. This person will have very strong project management skills and a demonstrated knowledge of the editorial and production process. Must be able to develop and maintain cordial relationships with authors, copyeditors, designers and others. Must be able to balance many projects in a fast-paced environment and meet deadlines. Proficiency in Microsoft Word (Mac OS).

Please e-mail your resume and cover letter. No phone calls please.

Send application to Felice Newman, Publisher: fnewman-at-cleispress-dot-com

NewPages Updates :: February 24, 2010

Welcome the newest additions to NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines:

Buzzard Picnic – short fiction, memoir, essay, criticism, reviews, interviews
Birmingham Arts Journal – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, artwork, photography
Booth – art, poetry, prose, lists, and literary comics
Interrobang?! – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, photography, art, music, video
NoD Magazine
Bone Bouquet – poetry
Stymie Magazine – fiction, poetry, nonfiction, photography
Glass – poetry

Black River Chapbook Winner

The 2009 Fall Black River Chapbook Competition winner is Lisa Fay Coutley for In The Carnival of Breathing, which will be published by Black Lawrence Press in the summer of 2011.

Semi-Finalists
Amelia Cohen-Levy – More People than Trees
Christine Klocek-Lim – The Quantum Archives
Darren Morris – Grand Unified Theory
Edward Mullany – A New Russia
Jennifer Michalski – Go to War, Stanley Polensky
Kelly Magee – A Guide to Strange Places: Stories
Rachel Mehl – Letter to Amber in November
Stefanie Freele – Every Girl Has An Ex Named Steve
Susanna Williams – They Say We Don’t Exist
Tracy Geary – Sting
William Snyder – Voices

Finalists
Andrew R. Touhy – Designs for a Magician’s Top Hat
Benjamin Vogt – Without Such Absence
Megan Garr – The Preservationist Documents
Stephanie Gehring – Foghorn Call
David Salner – Summer Words
Alison Pelegrin – Hurricane Party
Benjamin Hollars – Some kind of memorial
Brad Davis – Self Portrait w/ Disposable Camera
Brian Trimboli and Megan Moriarty – Notes from a Zombie Apocolypse

2yr & 4yr CW Faculty Survey

Mary Lannon and Christina Rau (Instructors at Nassau Community College) are “presenting on the impact (if any) of demographics on college-level teaching of creative writing at AWP in April 2010.” If you have taught creative writing at the college level, please take the short on-line survey by clicking on the following link: Survey

Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference

Applications are now being accepted for the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference (MA) for March 26-29. This conference has been created for poets who are either ready to publish a book-length (or chapbook-length) manuscript or who feel they need a reality check on their current manuscript-in-progress. Since our first conference, in March of 2006, over 35 Colrain manuscripts have been accepted for publication.

Faculty includes Martha Rhodes, Director of Four Way Books, Peter Covino, Poetry Editor of Barrow Street Press, Jeffrey Levine, Editor and Publisher of Tupelo Press, Ellen Dore Watson, Director of the Smith College Poetry Center, and conference founder, Joan Houlihan, Director of the Concord Poetry Center.

Glimmer Train December Fiction Open Winners :: 2010

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their December 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. No theme restrictions. The next Fiction Open competition will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Stephanie Soileau (pictured), of San Francisco, CA, wins $2000 for “Chemiere Caminada.” Her story will be published in the Spring 2011 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in February 2011.

Second place: Diane Chang, of Chicago, IL, wins $1000 for “The Teacher and the Revolution.” Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Third place: Naama Goldstein, of Allston, MA, wins $600 for “Stronghold.”

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

Deadline soon approaching! February Short Story Award for New Writers: February 28

This competition is held quarterly and is open to 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.

Believer Film Annual

McSweeney’s will soon be coming out with The Believer‘s annual Film Issue, “complete this year with a DVD of short films by none other than Karpo Godina, hero of 1960s Yugoslavian “Black Wave” Cinema—and also including Elif Batuman on screenplays by Nabokov, Churchill, and Sartre; Brian T. Edwards watching Shrek in Tehran; Hilton Als on Buddy Ebsen; Ross Simonini v. Harmony Korine; David Mamet’s cartoon film treatments; Avatar jokes; Tron; angry British shrubbery; vérité sheep; and more.”

Advice to Pandora

Yet another intelligently fun non-fiction piece from Lisa K. Buchanan – excerpted here from Meridian 24:

Pandora Seeks Advice Online

Dear Pandora,
My vote: Have your husband open it.
~Eve

Panny Love,
Why didn’t I think of that?
~Epimetheus

Sweet Pandora,
It’s like I told Eve. You will not die. Do you have that straight? Hear me loud and clear. You will not die.
Open it.
~The Serpent

Pick up a copy to read the rest of advice from other notables: Bluebeard, Plato, Francis Bacon, Snow White, Aphrodite, Zeus, and many more – often with exchanges to one another, and including some “real life” comments by equally archetypal figures from Buchanan’s own life.

Photography :: John King Used Books

John King Used Books, located at 901 West Lafayette Boulevard, Detroit, MI, is the subject of a recent photo essay by LAWRENCEcreative. While I often will be sure I have a list of indie and used bookstores to check out while visiting cities, John King Used Books is the kind of place you make the destination of your visit. Unassuming from the outside, it’s like stepping into an alternative universe when you walk through the doors – and one where book people (especially collectors) feel incredibly at home.

As LAWRENCEcreative writes:

“No matter what type of book you may be looking for the next time, it is my suggestion that you forego the trip to Borders or Barnes & Noble, and take a trip to see this place. Upon walking in, and after you have picked your jaw up off the floor, be sure to introduce yourself at the front desk and ask for a map to the 4 floors of adventure. Or, as I have done numerous times, just wander. Let yourself get lost between the shelves and discover something you never knew existed. Find a dark corner with enough light and open up that copy of T.H. White’s ‘Sword in the Stone’, and get away from all the economy bullshit of our daily lives. It will reenergize your soul.”

Arts Writers Grants Program

The Arts Writers Grant Program issues awards for articles, blogs, books, new and alternative media, and short-form writing. It aims to support the broad spectrum of writing on contemporary visual art, from general-audience criticism to academic scholarship. Through all its grants, regardless of topic or category type, the Arts Writers Grant Program strives to honor and encourage writing about art. Deadline April 26, 2010.

Firewheel Editions Book Award Winners

Firewheel Editions announces the winners of the following two competitions:

2010 Sentence Book Award
Sinead O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds by Maureen Seaton and Neil de la Flor

Finalists
Matthew Cooperman
Doug Ramspeck
Trigilio

Semifinalists
John Colasacco
Jeannine Gailey
Daryl Scroggins

2010 Firewheel Chapbook Award
25 Sightings of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker by Re’lynn Hansen

Finalists
Susan Briante
Farid Matuk
Edgar Sager
Neil de la Flor
Jennifer Jean
Marc Levy

Semifinalists
Craig Blais
Elizabeth Kerlikowske
Peter Ciccariello

NewPages February Lit Mag Reviews

Check out this FRESH batch of literary magazines reviews:

Agni
Atlanta Review
Barn Owl Review
Beloit Poetry Journal
Cincinnati Review
Colorado Review
Conjunctions
Grain
Habitus
Magnapoets
Mare Nostrum
NANO Fiction
New England Review
On the Premises
PEN America
Per Contra
PMS PoemMemoirStory
Rattle
Southeast Review
South Loop Review
Straylight
upstreet

Blurring Fiction and Non-Fiction

Great resource: OnFiction: An Online Magazine on the Psychology of Fiction.

Raymond A. Mar, Assistant Professor of Psychology at York University and contributor to OnFiction to comments on “the blurring boundaries between fiction and nonfiction.” The post includes a YouTube animation video from This American Life. Read his post here: Lights, Camera, Fiction.

Pongo Blog on Writing

Read founder of Pongo Teen Writing Project Richard Gold’s blog post about the poetry workshop he led recently at a women’s prison, about how readily the women wanted to write about some of the most difficult experiences in their lives.

Gold has several other posts that would be of interest to those working with writers, especially in similar populations as Pongo’s focus on teens who are in jail, on the streets, or in other ways leading difficult lives:

A Black Hole in the Spirit (describing silence in the wake of trauma)
How Do You Talk About Violence?
Lost Family and Deep Shame
Feeling Invisible (what happens when other people tell the stories of who we are and what we will become)
Telling Your Story, Claiming Your Life

Poetry for a Cause

Hypoplastic Right Hearts (a 501 c3 not-for-profit) presents The Heart’s Content, a poetry compilation featuring work from Chris Ransick, Michael Henry, Patrick Carrington, Ellaraine Lockie, Bill Roberts, Michael Adams, Sharon Auberle, Fredrick W. Bassett, C.E. Chaffin, J. Glenn Evans, Barbara Larsen, Sam Piper, Joy Roulier Sawyer, Stephani Scaefer, Debra Shirley, Shirley Sullivan, Patricia Wellingham-Jones, and Irene Zimmerman.

All proceeds from the sale of this book benefit the Hypoplastic Right Hearts mission of CHD awareness and education, advocacy, and emotional support of families whose children are afflicted with severe congenital heart disease.

New Lit on the Block :: Bone Bouquet

Editor Krystal Languell is the driving force behind Bone Bouquet, a biannual online journal seeking to publish the best new writing by female poets, from artists both established and emerging. Bone Bouquet will appear in January and July, online only in 2010 and in print in 2011.

The inaugural issue is now available in PDF, and features the works of Toni L. Wilkes, Meghan Brinson, Sarah Vap, Becca Barniskis, Juliet Cook, Danielle Pafunda, Jenny Boully, Sarah Rose Nordgren, Susan Briante, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Allison Layfield, Paula Koneazny and Carmen Gim

Poetry: It’s Not Dead Yet

Prairie Schooner Managing Editor James Engelhardt takes Patrick Gillespie (Let Poetry Die) to task on several issues: “Patrick Gillespie has some interesting takes on the state of poetry. He’s a thoughtful guy, and the article he’s written is interesting, but I kept disagreeing with the piece. I want to sort out some of my reactions, and I thought it might be useful to share those reactions here.” These States of Poetry – Jump in!

Residency :: LMCC

Workspace is a studio residency program for emerging visual artists and writers focused on the creative process. Residents receive free studio space in Lower Manhattan for nine months, a modest one-time stipend (depending on funding), access to a community of peers, professional development in the form of weekly group and individual meetings with arts and literary professionals called Salon Evenings, and exposure to new audiences through presence on LMCC’s website and public programs like the final Open Studio Weekend. Deadline March 25.

Call for Video & Film Extended

Split This Rock Poetry Festival is looking for artistic, experimental, and challenging film/video interpretations of poetry that explore critical social issues. Selected work will be screened during the Split This Rock Poetry Festival film program. Entries can be up to 15 minutes long. New Postmark extended deadline: Friday, February 26, 2010. Guidelines here. Entry form here.

Atlanta Review – Fall/Winter 2009

“After a disarmingly calm opening, this issue plunges right into the temptations of sex and chocolate, which even Death seems to find irresistible,” says editor and publisher Dan Veach in his “Welcome.” The calm is Catherine Tahmin’s “Small Talk” (“It’s raining and that’s all / we want to know.”); the sex is Michale Myerhofer’s “First Crush” (“Across our little circle jived this ribboned thing / with her anatomical differences / of which we Catholic boys knew nothing.”); Janet Jennings and Mary Soon Lee contribute the chocolate with “The Chocolate Factory” (“You can smell the roast from two miles away”) and “Master of Chocolate” (“After fifty-six years selling chocolate, / he knows what his customers want”). It’s Soon Lee’s poem that brings us death, too, though somehow it seems unfair that it’s the person who sells the chocolate, not the one indulging (“The old woman who leaves her dachshund outside / wants foil-wrapped liqueurs for her sister / and a single hazelnut cream for her dog.”) who must die. (To be fair, death eats her chocolate slowly and allows the salesman “to write a last note to his wife.”). Continue reading “Atlanta Review – Fall/Winter 2009”

Barn Owl Review – 2009

The front cover of the 2009 issue of Barn Owl Review depicts a destroyed playground, the aftermath, perhaps, of a tornado: a blue twisting slide on its side, trees smashed into the remnants of a swing set, what might have been a plastic fort. On the magazine’s back cover is a picture of a little plastic lion cub sitting on a toilet, tail lifted. These photos are nothing too out of the ordinary yet convey states of mind caught between damage and play, humor and humanity’s excreta, metaphoric and otherwise. Continue reading “Barn Owl Review – 2009”

Beloit Poetry Journal – Winter 2009/10

Everything in this issue was (happily, happily) unexpected. Karl Elder’s “Snowman” in the shape of a snowman that could have then been silly, but was not: “this is snowballing toward a title below – / both visible and invisible like like without / the ‘k,’ like the buzz word for a buzzard / sitting on a blind man in a blizzard.” Mary Molinary’s series “poems composed for the left hand,” which combined verse in lines, prose poems, verse in columns, and childish hand-written scrawl (“to keep dementia away”). “Leaning in from the Sea” by Kerry James Evans, short bursts separated by bullets and punctuated by bold, violent outbursts (“Fucked the green out of her eyes,” and “All that blood. All those feathers.”). Philip Pardi’s “My Father’s Christening,” a poem in nine numbered segments that begins with the utterly seductive single line “After the story, its telling, and only then is it a story.” Don Shofield’s “Harmony, USA,” a poem in a dozen numbered segments that ends: Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Winter 2009/10”

The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2010

There are lots of reasons to read this issue, but here’s what you won’t want to miss: poet Khaled Mattawa, author of four books of poems (one forthcoming from New Issues Press) introduces and translates the poems of Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser (now based in London). The translations are lovely, fluid, authentic, and credible. Nasser’s poems are marvelous, deceptively simple and incredibly powerful in a subtle and lyrical way, as in this excerpt from “Once Upon an Evening in a Café”: Continue reading “The Cincinnati Review – Winter 2010”

Colorado Review – Fall/Winter 2009

Great short fiction exists! This issue of Colorado Review confirms it. Volume 36, Number 3 features three extremely good short stories, including the magazine’s annual Nelligan Prize winner, Angela Mitchell, whose first-ever published story, “Animal Lovers,” is both unpredictable and reasonable, by which I mean credible, realistic, and emotionally compelling. Mitchell has an ear for natural and believable dialogue, a great sense of timing, and casual, but carefully composed prose that is readable, but not incidental. Continue reading “Colorado Review – Fall/Winter 2009”

Conjunctions – 2009

There are so many stars in this issue one almost needs sunglasses to get through the Table of Contents. Reading the work, one sees that these bright names (Francine Prose, William H. Gass, Peter Gizzi, Maureen Howard, Cole Swensen, Nathaniel Mackey, Ann Lauterbach, Rachel Plau DuPlessis) deserve their shiny reputations. Some of their work conforms to the issue’s theme, “Not Even Past: Hybrid Histories,” described by editor Bradford Morrow as “works in which past moments in history play a centralizing role.” Other work is categorized simply as “new.” Continue reading “Conjunctions – 2009”

Grain – Fall 2009

I know I sound like a broken record, but I can’t say it enough. I just don’t think there is a magazine published on this side of the border that can compare with the Canadian magazines. Grain is published in Saskatchewan and like the many marvelous literary journals produced across the vast and exquisite land to my north, it is exceptionally good. The theme of this issue is “Conversation,” which I understand to mean dialogue, relationship(s), images that reverberate and connect, and language in the service of vision, understanding, and meaningfulness. Editor Sylvia Legris traces the word’s roots to “the act of living with” or to keep company. Grain is all this and more. Continue reading “Grain – Fall 2009”

Habitus – 2009

This journal, by choosing a different international city with a substantial Jewish population for each issue, examines the effects of Jewish culture on its surroundings as well as its own evolution. In the Moscow issue, the brooding Russian presence digs deep into the Jewish cultural consciousness. Themes of loneliness, death, estrangement, emigration, and abandonment permeate much of the writing. However, hope and redemption also lurk. The journal itself is book-sized, with a brilliant night photograph of Moscow on the cover, and is less than 200 pages. Continue reading “Habitus – 2009”

Magnapoets – January 2010

Short and sweet is probably the most appropriate description of Magnapoets, a biannual literary journal out of Ontario, Canada. The 8×10, saddle-stapled journal features four essays on poetry, six pages of Free Verse and Form poetry, six pages of Haiku and Senryu, and six pages of Tanka.

Continue reading “Magnapoets – January 2010”

Mare Nostrum – June 2006 – May 2008

In this volume of Mare Nostrum, poems, prose, translation, and reviews are inspired by the traveling exhibit, to Seattle, of Florentine art restored after a 1966 flood. Each piece here is lively and deserving of praise, and has a prominent sense of belonging within these pages. The reader gets a glimpse of this in editor Kevin Craft’s foreword. To wit, “Seeing them restored was like witnessing the first gleam of the Renaissance all over again – the emergence, literally, of perspective as a compositional axiom, of naturalism in the fine shades of feeling etched into each attentive figure.” And, like art itself, the pieces here are both alluringly ambiguous, and wrought with imagination that begs to be understood. Continue reading “Mare Nostrum – June 2006 – May 2008”

NANO Fiction – 2009

As the average attention span continues to decrease and the printed page is replaced by the teeny tiny screen, practitioners of flash fiction seem poised to take advantage of this evolution. The editors of NANO Fiction take the idea one step further. While many flash fiction narratives extend into the several hundreds of words, the stories in this volume are far shorter. The great struggle for the writer is to increase the potency of their narratives as the word count decreases. Continue reading “NANO Fiction – 2009”

New England Review – 2009

In these oh-so-unsettled times, I like to have something I can rely on. New England Review never lets me down. I know the quality of the writing will always be strong, serious, sophisticated, and that there will always be something unexpected, fresh without trying to impress. This issue lives up to the task – a good portion of the issue is devoted to an essay by the late critic and editor Ted Solotaroff (1928-2008), along with brief reflections of Solotaroff by more than a dozen and a half writers, editors, and literary colleagues. These remembrances are preceded by a long excerpt from Solotaroff’s, “The Literary Scene Changes,” an unfinished, unpublished memoir (his third). I enjoyed very much these personal recollections from Philip Roth, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Robert Stone, Robert Cohen, Hilma Wolitzer, Gerald Stern, Bobbie Ann Mason, Georges Borchardt, Gerald Howard, James Lasdun, Jill Schoolman, Russell Banks, Anton Shammas, Hy Enzer, Irene Skolnick, Douglas Unger, Allegra Goodman, Ehud Havazelet, and Max Apple. The diversity of ages, genres, and types of relationships to Solotaroff makes this little collection of tributes all the more appealing. Continue reading “New England Review – 2009”