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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!

New Book :: Paper Cuts

Paper Cuts: Lighter Verse by Gail White book cover image

Paper Cuts: Lighter Verse by Gail White
Kelsay Books, May 2023

Gail White’s first new chapbook in seven years shows no abatement in her trademark formalist cynicism as she takes on cats, gators, Edna Millay’s goldfish, and God. She expresses sympathy for the snails found mating inside her garbage can “because on Friday nights / I look ridiculous myself.” If the heat is getting you down, some iced light verse is highly recommended. Gail White was born in Florida but has disowned it for political reasons. She currently lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where Cajun food is available at all hours. Her other books, Asperity Street and Catechism, are available on Amazon.

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

Book Review :: Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder

Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

Ephemera, by Sierra DeMulder, offers readers a “camaraderie among / women and death, ” acknowledging “the ecstatic briefness of it all.” In the first two sections of the collection, the poet focuses on her origins and roots, offering faceted responses to where she comes from: “the body / is a body for such little time.” The first section attends predominantly to “the women in my family,” especially the poet’s grandmother, who “waits for death.” The second section traces the progression of love the poet has known, from first love to queer love to lasting love, asking: “Who would sign up to love something / so impermanent.” The second-half of the collection focuses primarily on pregnancy—wanting and trying to become pregnant, ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage, in vitro fertilization (IVF) and a viable pregnancy, and “waiting for our daughter.” These poems acknowledge “a thousand unrewindable moments” of grief “where all unfinished things dwell.” As these poems “leave… space for death,” they also offer “a blessing for each stitch.” In spite of or rather because DeMulder “give[s] thanks / for the loss,” recognizing life has “a levy on the road to” everything, she arrives triumphantly at the realization of an “intoxicating” and ephemeral “impermanence of enjoyment… everywhere.” Read these poems and “wake up back at the starting line, salvaged and full of hope.”

Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder. Button Poetry, June 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 :: The 2River View – Summer 2023

The 2River View Summer 2023 cover image

The Summer 2023 issue of The 2River View features new poems by Ed Coletti, Trent Busch, Rupert Fike, Matthew Freeman, Jeff Friedman, Jane Ellen Glasser, Jane McKinley, Brent Pallas, Judith Skillman, Tonya Suther, and Ellen June Wright as well as artwork by Christian Quintin. 2River quarterly publishes The 2River View, occasionally publishes individual authors in the 2River Chapbook Series, and blogs from Muddy Bank. All publications, online and printed, are free.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: World Too Loud to Hear

World Too Loud to Hear: Poems by Stephen Kampa book cover image

World Too Loud to Hear: Poems by Stephen Kampa
Able Muse Press, November 2023

The poems in Stephen Kampa’s World Too Loud to Hear confront today’s zeitgeist of dark social norms online or off. Our litany of individual and collective shortcomings is laid bare or castigated—as, for instance, with obligations we abhor, avoid, and “can’t wait / to pass down to the upstart generations.” The delivery ranges from straight or subtle to rants and execrations, while the settings range from historic and current affairs to the imaginary, dystopian, sci-fi, or surrealistic. This sui generis collection is fearless in hope, with a sobering take on our acceleratingly fearful national and global trajectory.

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

New & Noted Lit & Alt Mags – July 2023

NewPages receives many wonderful literary magazine and alternative magazine titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Mag Issues” under NewPages Blog or Mags. Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay the most up-to-date on all things literary!

American Indian Past & Present, 50.2, 336
American Poetry Review, July/August 2023
As You Were, Spring 2023
Bending Genres, June 2023
Clinch, 3
Colorado Review, Summer 2023
Copihue Poetry, 2
Cutleaf, 3.12
Ecotone, Spring/Summer 2023
Eggplant Tears, 2
Epiphany, Summer 2023
Epoch, Fall 2023
Erato, 2
Event, 52.1

Continue reading “New & Noted Lit & Alt Mags – July 2023”

Book Review :: We Are a Haunting by Tyriek White

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

We Are a Haunting by Tyriek White book cover image

Tyriek White’s novel We Are a Haunting follows three generations as they live in Brooklyn public housing. White shows the struggles of the family and the community, both in terms of the limited choices they have and the pressures that lead them to make some of those choices bad ones. However, he also portrays the joy so many of the characters find in the people who surround and support them, as they forgive old wrongs and work to make their neighborhood and themselves better. White also uses magic realism to explore whether his characters are fated for ill ends, as all three family members—Audrey, Key, and Colly—have the ability to see ghosts. Key crosses time, in fact, to speak to her son Colly well after she has died and he is still living, and she explains one of the family’s greatest problems: “Guess all of it stays with us. We’re a family of ghosts, of half-living.” Yet, by the end of the novel, Colly is learning how to make a life in a land that doesn’t seem to want him to have one, that views his and his family’s bodies as “reminders of toil and burden.” He’s learning how he can be more than a haunting to the place he loves.

We Are a Haunting by Tyriek White. Astra House, April 2023.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

Hone your craft, find your community with Spalding MFA

Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing logo

The Spalding University MFA is one of the nation’s first low-residency MFA in Writing programs, and it remains one of the most respected. You’ll write more here and receive more one-on-one faculty feedback than in nearly any other MFA program. Our students thrive with this extra attention in our encouraging, non-competitive environment. Over four mentored independent-study courses and five residencies, you’ll work with our outstanding faculty of actively publishing and producing writers. You’ll hone your craft, explore across genres, learn about the business of writing, and build a lifelong writing community.

We believe artists flourish in a culturally rich environment. We’re located in downtown Louisville, known for its arts, dining, parks, and historic neighborhoods. Friendships form at our “dormitory,” the elegant 1920s-era Brown Hotel, a short walk from campus. Each residency includes an interrelatedness-of-the-arts element, be that a theatre performance, museum visit, or other memorable experience.

Continue reading “Hone your craft, find your community with Spalding MFA”

New Book :: The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side

The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side Turns into a Tunnel of Love: Poems by Kimo RedeR book cover image

The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side Turns into a Tunnel of Love: Poems by Kimo RedeR
CW Books, January 2023

As its steeplechase of a title suggests, The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side Turns Into a Tunnel of Love is a book of oral and acoustic wordplay pressed to a precarious brink. These poetic experiments use alliteration, assonance, and related sound-devices to twist the tongue and tickle the eardrum while exploring matters of grammar, logic, and semantics. “Kimo RedeR’s writing explores the neuroscience of literacy, sensory overlaps between verbal meaning and oral flavor, occult aspects of the alphabet, and ecstatic, visionary states of language-use like graphomania and glossolalia.”

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

Where to Submit Roundup: July 21, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

NewPages is back with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities for the week of July 21. It’s scary to think that back-to-school time is just around the corner. Before you get too bogged down with all of the preparations, let us help you keep your submission goals going strong.

There is only one full week left in July, so don’t forget to check out the NewPages Big List of Writing Contests to scope out the deadlines in August and September!

NewPages Newsletter subscribers with a paid subscription get early and first access to our submission opportunities and upcoming events, the majority before they go live on our site. Consider subscribing today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: July 21, 2023”

New Book :: Excisions

Excisions by Hilary Plum book cover image

Excisions by Hilary Plum
Black Lawrence Press, April 2023

Excisions by Hilary Plum investigates the feeling—the problem and the syntax—of being on a threshold. If you don’t know what will happen next, you can’t yet say what has happened. These poems arise from states of precise unknowing, desperate imagination, inchoate emotion, encounters with mortality and power when they’re closing in but haven’t caught you yet. What is choice, given the terms of an ill body, survival in a grotesque empire? Tenderly and acutely, these poems examine the life of before and after: when something is excised from you, it was you, and you are what remains.

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

Book Review :: I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore book cover image

Plot is not the point in Lorrie Moore’s latest novel, If I Am Homeless This is Not My Home. Some people die, while some people live, and some of the living people have conversations with the people who have died. And not all the ghosts in the novel are those who have died, though some certainly are. Moore wants to explore what it means to be alive, to have a life, while also digging into mourning and grief and death, primarily through Finn, the main character. Finn’s ex-girlfriend, Lily, has struggled with mental illness as long as he has known her, and she has tried to commit suicide numerous times. Finn’s brother, Max, is dying of cancer. Finn doesn’t deal well with either of these situations, often refusing to face the reality of their mortality, but also ignoring the truths about their relationships. There are also interspersed chapters from letters written by Elizabeth, a woman who ran an inn in the post-Civil War South, a minor storyline that ultimately connects both literally and thematically to Finn’s story by the end of the novel. Lest this description sound rather bleak, Moore is as humorous as she always is, though more clever than funny. Still, she acknowledges the joy and laughter we must continue to find, even when—perhaps especially when—life and the end of it becomes miserable.

I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore. Alfred A. Knopf, June 2023.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

New Lit on the Block :: Compass Rose Literary Journal

Compass Rose Literary Journal Spring 2023 issue cover image

“A compass rose,” explains Kelly Easton, founding Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of the online quarterly Compass Rose Literary Journal, “is the visual representation of the cardinal directions on a map, nautical chart, or compass. CRLJ was founded in late 2022 as a home for all voices that seek direction. As our mission intersects the literary, the philosophical, and the spiritual, the compass rose speaks to our shared journeys as fellow searchers. Our tagline is ‘bushwhacking through art’; we are unafraid of tackling the wild, the unknown, the messy, the difficult, to find our way. We are particularly welcoming to traditionally underrepresented voices, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and the neurodivergent, along with survivors of addiction.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Compass Rose Literary Journal”

Magazine Stand :: Kaleidoscope – Summer/Fall 2023

Kaleidoscope Summer/Fall 2023 issue cover image

A pioneer in its field, Kaleidoscope magazine publishes work that creatively explores the experience of disability. With the theme of “The Ties that Bind,” there are two prominent threads woven into Issue 87: family and deafness. Our featured essay, by Paul Hostovsky, contains elements of both. The featured artist is Kelly Simpson. Kaleidoscope hopes readers will enjoy the work by these contributors: Roly Andrews, Caitlin C. Baker, Shanan Ballam, Rebecca Brothers, Connie Buckmaster, S. Leigh Ann Cowan, Benjamin Decter, Ellis Elliott, Robert Douglas Friedman, N.J. Haus, Shelly Jones, Susan Whiting Kemp, Lori Lindstrom, Claire McMurray, Gloria g. Murray, Wendy Nikel, Rachel Papirmeister, Ujjvala Bagal Rahn, Melanie Reitzel, Kate Robinson, Seth Schindler, Nancy Scott, Margaret D. Stetz, Marya Summers and Lee Ann Wilson.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Broken Metronome

Broken Metronome: Poems by Connie Post book cover image

Broken Metronome: Poems by Connie Post
Glass Lyre Press, May 2023

Connie Post’s chapbook poetry collection, Broken Metronome, is about her brother’s journey and eventual death from Parkinson’s disease. These poems explore the difficult realities of the disease and its end stage. The work examines the closeness of siblings and how that bond is not broken, even when illness strikes. The poems delve into the many corners of the long goodbye and its aftermath. Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California from 2005 to 2009 and hosted a popular reading series in the San Francisco Bay Area in Crockett, California. She has published numerous collections as well as individual works that have received a variety of awards and recognitions beyond publication. Her collection Between Twilight was released in February 2023 by New York Quarterly Books.

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

Magazine Stand :: EVENT – 52.1

EVENT 52.1 cover image

EVENT 52.1 features the 2022 Non-Fiction Contest winners introduced by Judge Jenny Heijun Wills who selected Carolyn Chung’s “Black Pill” for 1st Place, Shane Neilson’s “Differential” for 2nd Place, and Eun Yoon’s “Real Magic” for 3rd Place. The issue also include new poetry by Shannon Barry, Michael Onsando, Laura Zacharin, Tanis MacDonald, Ruth E. Walker, Richard Brait, Deepa Rajagopalan, Joelle Barron, Nancy Huggett, Wendy Weseen, Rhona McAdam, Nancy Jo Cullen, Susan Glickman, Karin Hedetniemi, Y.S. Lee, Kagan Goh, Natasha Sanders-Kay, Louise Carson, Samantha Jones, Angela Long, Courtney Bates-Hardy, J Tate Barlow, fiction by Nadja Lubiw-Hazard, and illustrations by Nora Kelly. Cover art: “Yves Tanguay Skies” by Wade Comer.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Book Review :: Maths by Joel Chace

Maths by Joel Chace book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

In Joel Chace’s Maths, each page is “serving as a threshold” between the author’s “original writing” and “mathematical commentary.” There is a sense that by combining these two lexicons the author is solving for something akin to inclusivity and unity. Or, are the combined poetic and mathematical vibrations an assertion against whoever, whatever keeps languages separate? The focus of each page is complement and connection between components, creating a collaged page aesthetic that elicits engagement with the visual and the written. Each page is a “structural oddity,” a disordered space “the contents / of which entirely depend upon where / I take my stand” or, where a reader takes hers. Upon engaging the pages of Maths, I was confronted with a feeling of trauma being enacted, an “awful math” of catastrophic accident and “the odds” of irreparable destruction: “Less than one minute to tear open so many years.” There is something being made of the predictability of humans and numbers, of humans as numbers—a unifying treatment of discrete and continuous variables. Chace’s is a book “dedicated to solving / the riddle of its own existence.” In the end, “everything falls into place, each / beautiful number and function.”

Maths by Joel Chace. Chax Press, 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/

New Book :: Unaccompanied

Unaccompanied by Tracy White book cover image

Unaccompanied: Stories of Brave Teenagers Seeking Asylum by Tracy White
Street Noise Books, June 2023

Unaccompanied: Stories of Brave Teenagers Seeking Asylum, a graphic novel by Tracy White, tells the true stories of five brave teens fleeing their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guinea, on their own, traveling through unknown and unfriendly places, and ultimately crossing into the US to find refuge and seek asylum. Based on extensive interviews with teen refugees, lawyers, caseworkers, and activists, this book shines a light on five individual kids from among the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who enter the US each year. In stark black and white illustrations, she helps us understand why some young people would literally risk their lives to seek safety in the US. Each one of them has been backed into a corner where emigration to the US seems like their only hope.

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

Magazine Stand :: As You Were – Volume 18

Military Experience and the Arts logo image

As You Were: The Military Review, Volume 18 from Military Experience & the Arts contains over thirty works in literary fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and artwork representative of the full spectrum of those impacted by military service – combat veterans, war orphans, or citizens who’ve felt the pull of history. They are all important additions to the literary and artistic canon surrounding military service. The issue features fiction by Jack R. Johnson, Phil Carson, Lucas Randolph, Ginger Dehlinger, Craig Gridelli, Ben Weise, Jillian Danback-McGhan, Erik Cederblom; nonfiction by Stanley Ross, William Gritzbaugh, Bettina Hindes, Larry Moss, Michael Dedrick, Richard Bramley, Art Foster, Erik E. Gize, Aliza Dube, Travis Harman; poetry by Carlin Corsino, Michelle DeRose, Christian Aldana, Katharina Breide, Nancy Austin, Michael Ball, Chad Corrigan, Deborah Baxter, Nelson Randall, Connie Kinsey, Cathleen Lundy Daniel, Patrick Dennis Riley, Andrew Lafleche, Michael Foran, Jerry L. Staub, Blake Ringer; and artwork by Wayne David Hubbard, Jennifer McKeen Rodrigues, Erik E. Gize, Dmitry Borshch.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week – July 17, 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 Cincinnati Review Spring 2023 cover image

The Spring 2023 issue of The Cincinnati Review features cover art by Tina Williams Brewer, detail from I Come from a Long Line of Big Boned Black Women, 2002, fabric with mixed media. Inside includes a portfolio of her work as well as an artist statement. Writers might like to know about the special section of “Craft review of ‘unreasonably good’ writing.” Lots to enjoy in this issue.

Conjunctions 80 cover image

“Ways of Water” is the theme for issue 80 of Conjunctions biannual print journal, with hypnotizing cover art, Consortium, 2021, oil on linen by Elliott Green.

Southern Poetry Review 60.2 cover image

Founded in 1958, Southern Poetry Review is the “second oldest poetry journal in the region,” and remains fresh and relevant with each new issue. “Night Heron” (2021) is the cover image by filmmaker, writer, and photographer Kayla Bell.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Strength of the Illusion

The Strength of the Illusion by Jared Moore book cover image

The Strength of the Illusion by Jared Moore
Ergal Press, September 2023

The Strength of the Illusion comes to readers from Jared Moore, lecturer at the University of Washing School of Computer Science, who has created a course on the philosophy of AI and regularly teaches ethics and technical artificial intelligence courses. In this debut satirical novel, the AI researcher, Ty, has discovered how to teach a machine to write. He joins a start-up, Opel, eager to bring on-demand literature to millions. As Opel makes overbold claims about how its writing machine with automate human connection, Ty is increasingly drawn to the fiery connection with his activist partner, Zora. As each flees from their own past, Ty and Zora enjoy passionate debates about how to create a future together. When Zora urges Ty to join her protest against big tech, Ty is forced to decide what he really values. Caught between worlds, Ty loses himself in the advice of his writing machine.

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

Book Review :: Divination with a Human Heart Attached by Emily Stoddard

Divination with a Human Heart Attached by Emily Stoddard book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

The central figure of Emily Stoddard’s Divination with a Human Heart Attached is a daughter who is sometimes the poet interested in story and belief, and at others, she is Petronilla, the spiritual daughter of Peter. Peter, as it is told, trapped Petronilla either by paralyzing her or by locking her in a tower to prevent her from being beguiled by suitors taken with her beauty: “which part of my body most worried him, was it the eyes.” The main concerns of these poems are father-daughter relationships, gendered power structures, and venustraphobia: “has there ever been a body / like that / that hasn’t been dangerous.” The poems also foreground trials of faith and tests of will: “how optimistically / some people use the word faith.” The daughter writing the poems struggles with relationships to God, to family, and to her husband. As the poems confront deaths of family members and loss of marital innocence—“proportions of grief”—they seem to ask who/what is divine, “looking for a God / to attach to it.” While God seems not to appear, Magpie does, conjuring the 16th-century nursery rhyme “One for Sorrow,” which suggests the number of birds seen tells of good or bad fortune. Also, as it is told, Magpie stayed outside the ark during the Flood’s rising waters and did not offer Jesus comfort at the crucifixion. These acts of divination, independence, and defiance seem to be what inspires the daughter in these poems. Through her, the poems arrive at two declarations: “I want more passion, less resurrection” and “Grief is the thing / that says the world is real.” If an “elegy is trying to tell the future,” then reading Emily Stoddard’s “gold-star” debut may well foretell yours.

Divination with a Human Heart Attached by Emily Stoddard. Game Over Books, February 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/

New Book :: The Book of Redacted Paintings

The Book of Redacted Paintings by Arthur Kayzakian book cover image

The Book of Redacted Paintings by Arthur Kayzakian
Black Lawrence Press, May 2023

In The Book of Redacted Paintings by Arthur Kayzakian, the narrative arc follows a boy in search of his father’s painting, but it is unclear whether the painting exists or not. The book, a poetry collection, is also populated by a series of paintings. Some are real, incomplete, and/or missing, while most are redacted from reality. The withdrawn paintings concept is the emotional arc of the book, a combination of wishing one could paint the pieces he/she/they envision and the feeling of something torn out of a person due to a traumatic upbringing. A sort of erasure ekphrasis, to foresee artwork that was never painted. A Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series selection.

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

New Book :: Hammer of the Dogs

Hammer of the Dogs: A Novel by Jarret Keene book cover image

Hammer of the Dogs: A Novel by Jarret Keene
University of Nevada Press, September 2023

Hammer of the Dogs: A Novel by Jarret Keene is a literary dystopian adventure set in the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas and filled with high-octane fun starring twenty-one-year-old Lash. With her high-tech skill set and warrior mentality, Lash is a master of her own fate as she helps to shield the Las Vegas valley’s survivors and protect her younger classmates at a paramilitary school holed up in Luxor on the Las Vegas Strip. After graduation, she’ll be alone in fending off the deadly intentions and desires of the school’s most powerful opponents.

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

Books Received July 2023

NewPages receives many wonderful book titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these by clicking on “New Books” under the NewPages Blog or Books tab on the menu. If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry

54 Poems, John Levy, Shearsman Books
Alone, J.R. Solonche, David Robert Books
American Scapegoat, Enzo Silon Surin, Black Lawrence Press
the book of redacted paintings, Arthur Kayzakian, Black Lawrence Press
Dear Beloved Humans: Selected Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski, trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Lavender Ink/Dialogos Books
Its Shadow Rakes the Grass, Bill Christophersen, Kelsay Books
The Ledger of Mistakes, Kathy Nelson, Terrapin Books
The Teller’s Cage, John Philip Drury, Able Muse Press

Fiction

All the Ways We Lived, Aida Zileian, Keylight Books
And Dogs to Chase Them, Ray Trotter, EastOver Press
The Black Hole Pastrami, Jeffrey Feingold, Meat for Tea Press
Black Licorice, Elaina Battista-Parsons
The Books Of Clash Volume 2: Legendary Legends Of Legendarious Achievery by Gene Luen Yang; illustrated by Les McClaine and Alison Acton, First Second Books
Doña Quixote: Rise of the Knight by Rey Terciero; illustrated by Monica M. Magaña, Henry Holt Books

Continue reading “Books Received July 2023”

Magazine Stand :: About Place Journal – July 2023

About Place Journal July 2023 cover image

About Place Journal is published by the Black Earth Institute with each issue having a specific theme and edited by one of their BEI Fellows. The July 2023 issue is themed ‘On Rivers.’ Rivers are deep sources of connection and memory, holding very different meanings for different communities, and this issue seeks to honor the many types of relationships we have with rivers. Coeditors Teresa Dzieglewicz and Laura-Gray Street, with consulting editors Lucien Darjeun Meadows and Irene Vázquez, have curated a wide range of prose, poetry, visual art, and hybrid and multi-modal work, creating a collective view on rivers that is expansive and surprising.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: What Drifted Here

What Drifted Here: Poems by Barbara Siegel Carlson book cover image

What Drifted Here: Poems by Barbara Siegel Carlson
Cherry Grove Collections, December 2022

What Drifted Here by Barabara Siegel Carlson is a book of intensely lyrical meditations that dwells in the silent, often overlooked or seemingly ordinary places where the mysterious and miraculous abide, and where amidst love and grief, we draw ever closer to the heart of the spiritual. The poems, some in prose form and dramatic monologue, take dreamlike leaps into worlds both personal and historical, glimpsing through the cracks something we can never wholly know but which leaves us changed.

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

July 2023 eLitPak :: 2024 Todos Santos Writers Workshop

Screenshot of the flyer for the 2024 Todos Santos Writers Workshop
click image to open PDF

February 4-10, 2024

Early Bird Discount Deadline: September 1, 2023
Join us in Baja, in our pueblo magico by the sea, for our 11th annual Winter Session in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Writers at all levels welcome, with workshops in Memoir, Poetry, Fiction, and Storytelling Strategies. Faculty: Jeanne McCulloch, Karen Karbo, Christopher Merrill, and Rex Weiner. To apply, visit our website. View flyer for more details. #lithappens

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July 2023 eLitPak :: Loida Maritza Pérez SOMOS Writer’s Showcase Reading

Screenshot of the SOMOS Writers' Showcase Loida Maritza Pérez Reading flyer
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Presenting Writers Showcase author, Loida Maritza Pérez, on Saturday, 8/19/23, at 5:30pm at SOMOS, 108 Civic Plaza Drive, Taos, NM 87571. A native of the Dominican Republic, a 2022-23 National Leaders of Color Fellow, Perez is the author of Geographies of Home. Her upcoming book, Beyond the Pale, won a PEN America 2019 Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. View flyer to learn more.

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July 2023 eLitPak :: Write and Workshop—Women Writer’s Retreat in the Catskills

Screenshot of the Women at Woodstock Fall 2023 Retreat flyer
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Registration Deadline: October 1, 2023
An intimate retreat of passionate writers. We write and workshop by day and gather for a wine & cheese salon every evening to share readings. Guest writer Elizabeth Brundage, author of several novels including The Vanishing Point, A Stranger Like You, and All Things Cease to Appear (the basis for the Netflix film “Things Heard and Seen”) will lead an in-depth conversation on our third day. View flyer and click here to request more information.

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July 2023 eLitPak :: Now Available: The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee

Screenshot of Temple University Press flyer announcing release of The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee
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The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee is the first volume to feature the author’s complete short fiction. Leading Mukherjee scholar Ruth Maxey unearthed seven unknown stories: five in Mukherjee’s unpublished 1963 Iowa Writer’s Workshop M.F.A. thesis, “The Shattered Mirror,” and two tales from 2008. It is essential for readers familiar with Mukherjee’s work and new to her groundbreaking fiction. View flyer to learn more.

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July 2023 eLitPak :: Issue 87 of Kaleidoscope Available! Accepting Submissions Year-Round

Screenshot of Kaleidoscope's flyer for Issue 87 release and call for submissions
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We experience many connections in life and in this issue we take a closer look at the ties that bind. Each thread woven into loops, knots, and swirls, revealing an intricate tapestry. Kaleidoscope magazine publishes literature and artwork that creatively explore the experience of disability. Submit your best work to us today! Visit our website and view our flyer for more information.

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Where to Submit Roundup: July 14, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

NewPages is back with your weekly roundup of submission opportunities for the week of July 14. Hard to believe July is already half over with this weekend. Don’t forget about the July 15 deadlines!

Our eLitPak Newsletter was emailed to subscribers this past Wednesday and features more submission opportunities and upcoming events as well as new releases. You can read it here. Are you interested in promoting your own journal, small press, new book release, upcoming event, or submission opportunities, you can learn more here.

NewPages Newsletter subscribers with a paid subscription get early and first access to our submission opportunities and upcoming events, the majority before they go live on our site. Consider subscribing today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: July 14, 2023”

Magazine Stand :: The Keeping Room – July 2023

face of a woman facing to the right on a purple background with Minerva Rising Press written underneath

The Keeping Room is an online magazine from Minerva Rising Press that publishes short stories, essays, free writing, and photo essays that touch on topics related to Women’s Wisdom, Lessons Learned, Self-care, Bodies, Relationships, and Community. Writers selected for publication will be paid $25 via PayPal. Recent works include “DOGGED” by Marty Kingsbury, “Jesus Is Delicious” by Monica J. Casper, “Lipstick” by Norma Schafer, “Dinner for Two Lovely People” by Tracy Harris, and “Glimpses” by Anne E. Beall.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: American Scapegoat

American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin book cover image

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

American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin is a book of painstakingly honest and chilling poems about America’s neglectful relationship with its own history. At the core of this reluctance to frame the past in its proper context is the fraudulent and fraught mythology that Black people are what America needs to be protected from. This extremely damaging narrative has been prominently embedded within the socio-political framework of American culture and continues to play an inescapably significant role in the Black experience in America. This timely collection looks both to the past and the future and fosters a deeply essential conversation about what it means to be Black and American in a democracy at war with itself and its humanity.

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

Book Review :: Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra

Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra book cover image

Guest Post by Colm McKenna

Bonsai, Alejandro Zambra’s first novel feels like it is over before it has even begun. I read it this morning over two coffees. By the time I finished it, I had eight, largely monosyllabic notes scrawled across the front-end paper; more often than not, my comments will spill over onto the half-title page. That is not to say that there is little noteworthy in Zambra’s book. Moreso, it is indicative of a well-crafted, engrossing story, a story in which narrative takes absolute precedent.

I find myself falling into Zambra’s stories without the teething problems that even the most ardent reader sometimes confronts in the opening few pages of a book. There is a mediopassive effect to Zambra’s prose. I think this ease stems from his self-contained, self-referential narratives; we are made to know from the off that we need only dedicate our attention to once-lovers Julio and Emilia, and that the periphery characters exist here only insofar as they reveal our protagonists. Those others could be fleshed out; they all have their favorite books, their ambitions, and secrets; they all go on dates and fall in love, but these details are not of any concern to the story being told. The narrative itself stands over the world like something tangible; when characters move on from Julio and Emilia, they move away from the story that is being told. In this self-contained narrative, this distance is equivalent to dropping out of the world.

Bonsai: A Novel by Alejandro Zambra; translated by Megan McDowell. Penguin Books, August 2022.

Reviewer bio: Colm McKenna is a second-hand bookseller based in Paris. He has published and self-published an array of short stories and articles, hoping to eventually release a collection of stories. He is mainly interested in the works of John Cowper Powys, Claude Houghton, and a range of Latin American writers.

Magazine Stand :: Bomb – Summer 2023

https://bombmagazine.org/

In BOMB’s Summer 2023 issue, painters Merlin James and Victoria Morton prepare for their upcoming joint show, poet Paisley Rekdal and visual artist Kenneth Tam visit the union of the transcontinental railroad, filmmaker Khalik Allah becomes one with the universe by a fireside, and Sophie Narrett talks to novelist Colm Tóibín about breaking free of societal expectations through embroidery. Plus, short stories from Vauhini Vara and Emily Nemens, an essay from poet Jenny Johnson on shadow bodies and the “oh so many ways to feel continuous,” poetry from Álvaro de Campos (a.k.a Fernando Pessoa), the conclusion of our Poetry of the Northern Triangle Diaspora series, and much more for readers to enjoy as summer courses on. Visit the BOMB website for information on subscriptions, single-issue orders, and to read select online content.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Cursebreakers

Cursebreakers by Madeleine Nakamura book cover image

Cursebreakers by Madeleine Nakamura
Canis Major Books, September 2023

In Cursebreakers by Madeleine Nakamura, professor of magic and disgraced ex-physician Adrien Desfourneaux has discovered a conspiracy. Someone is inflicting magical comas on the inhabitants of the massive city of Astrum, and no one knows how or why. Caught between a faction of scheming magical academics and an explosive schism in the ranks of the Astrum’s power-hungry military, Adrien is swallowed by the growing chaos. Alongside Gennady, an unruly, damaged young soldier, and Malise, a brilliant healer and Adrien’s best friend, Adrien searches for a way to stop the spreading curse before the city implodes. He must survive his own bipolar disorder, his self-destructive tendencies, and his entanglement with the man who doesn’t love him back.

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

New Lit on the Block :: The Palisades Review

cover of The Palisades Review Issue 1

The Palisades Review was named in tribute to Founder and Editor-in-Chief Mea Cohen’s hometown, Palisades, New York. “Given that so much of what I have personally written takes place in this town, and that the magazine is all about featuring the personal experience, I felt the name was fitting!”

The Palisades Review offers a new short-form nonfiction quarterly that favors “compressed stories that reverberate and deepen our collective sense of self, stories that are charged within by the extraordinary capacity of language to create community from individuals.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: The Palisades Review”

Magazine Stand :: The Gay & Lesbian Review – July/August 2023

The Gay and Lesbian Review July-August 2023 cover image

The Gay & Lesbian Review Editor Richard Schneider opens the July-August 2023 issue by exploring the theme “Fantasy Lands”: “Today’s digital technologies have created possibilities for whole new worlds of immersion and experience, and with them a panoply of subcultures organized around these sites. Under the rubric of ‘Fantasy Lands,’ let us visit a few of these milieux with relevance to LGBT life and culture. This is somewhat new territory for this magazine, which is usually concerned with historical themes and the arts, and it’s worth noting that all four theme articles were written by first-time contributors.” Those articles include “We’re Heroes, We’re Queeros…” by Andrew White; “Romancing the Avatar” by Ashton Corsetti; “Fanfiction and the Omegaverse” by Hannah Matthews; and “Grindr Leaves the City Behind” by Aislin Neufeldt. Visit the G&LR website for more information about his issue as well as past issues and subscriptions.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Layers

Layers: A Memoir by Pénélope Bagieu; translated by Montana Kane book cover image

Layers: A Memoir by Pénélope Bagieu; translated by Montana Kane
First Second, October 2023

When Pénélope Bagieu dusted off her old diaries, she found layer upon layer of cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking stories begging to be drawn. (Yes, seriously – this book is based on her actual diaries.) While she never thought she’d published a graphic memoir, Bagieu reflects on her childhood and teen years with her characteristic wit and unflinching honesty. The result is fifteen short stories about friendship, love, grief, and those awkward first steps toward adulthood.

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

Magazine Stand :: Collateral – Spring 2023

Online literary magazine Collateral logo

Collateral, which just released its 14th issue Spring 2023 online, publishes literary and visual art concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. There are many platforms sharing perspectives from the combat experience, and since 2016, Collateral has felt a need to amplify voices from the reverberations and lasting effects of conflict. These voices include stories from military families, environmentalists, active duty service members and veterans, civilians, immigrants, survivors, teachers, activists, journalists, and more. Collateral is run by women who are impacted by military service, either their own or from within their families, and the journal is completely online, free to read, and charges no fee to submit. They publish twice a year and often include work by long-established writers and artists alongside the newly published.

Contributors to the Spring 2023 issue include Lisa Wujnovich, Peter Schmitt, Andrew Shattuck McBride, Susanna Lang, Sonia Greenfield, C.C. Garrett, Paula Friedman, Ben Corvo, Layle Keane Chambers, Kevin Carollo, S.Y. Ball, Gale Acuff, Diane Lefer, Andria Williams, Jason Arment, Brecht De Poortere, Andy Flaherty, Mitzi Weems, Christina M. Wells, with a special feature on Eric J. García, an artist, cartoonist, veteran, and mentor from New Mexico.

New Book :: The Last Gay Man on Earth

The Last Gay Man on Earth: A Photo Comic by Ype Driessen book cover image

The Last Gay Man on Earth: A Photo Comic by Ype Driessen
Street Noise Books, June 2023

In the photo comic The Last Gay Man on Earth, author Ype Driessen is a gay man living in Amsterdam with his boyfriend Nico. When asked by Nico to accompany him on a work trip to America, Ype must confront his deep fear of flying. While doing so, Ype finds he also has to come to terms with his social and sexual anxieties, his neurotic nature, and a serious case of imposter syndrome. What follows is a moving and deeply personal story, filled with humor as well as drama —surprising, honest, and unforgettable. Ype embarks on an adventure that leads him to his ultimate fantasy: being the last person on earth. Encouraged by a sentient robot vacuum cleaner called Chupi, he finds out what it really means to be true to yourself.

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

Book Review :: When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Fatimah Asghar’s novel, When We Were Sisters, tells the story of three sisters who are orphaned, as was Asghar. Their uncle, who remains unnamed throughout the work, takes them in, not to actually care for them, but to use the money from their father’s death to fund his get-rich schemes that never work. The girls fend for themselves, often going hungry for days or weeks, living in squalorous conditions. They also have to work through their emotional struggles on their own, leading to trauma and suffering, especially for Kausar, the youngest sister and primary narrator of the novel. She portrays the sisters as watching out for one another, referring to them as sister-brothers or sister-mothers periodically in an attempt to show their toughness and their ability to nurture one another; however, Kausar realizes late in the novel that her perception has not been accurate. Asghar is a poet—this is her first novel—and her short sections feel almost like prose poems, at times; she even intersperses more poetic sections from the point of view of “him” and “her,” the sisters’ dead parents. Given their childhood, readers should be amazed at how well the sisters are able to manage largely on their own, but readers will also spend the novel wondering about the misogyny and greed that leads to their having to.

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar. One World, October 2022.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

Magazine Stand :: Cholla Needles – 79

Cholla Needles Issue 79 cover image

Issue 79 of Cholla Needles from Joshua Tree, California, features an exciting cover by young artist Lily M. Capra. The magical words within are by Bonnie Bostrom, Ron Riekki, Joy Gaines-Friedler, Christien Gholson, Miriam Sagan, David Chorlton, lalo kikiriki, J. David Rawn, James Marvelle, Johnny Kovatch, and Bobby Norman. Cholla Needles publishes monthly and therefore has rolling submission deadlines with editors who favor established and emerging writers with distinctive voices that communicate well with readers.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: EtC

EtC by Laura Mullen book cover image

EtC by Laura Mullen
Solid Objects, November 2023

EtC by Laura Mullen explores contemporary American selfhood, socially mediated and economically motivated, within a system where we learn to see and represent ourselves as one marketable image among many, where “brand” displaces character, and the corporal and corporate intersect. Elsie is both a collection of tropes for femininity (her embodied history leaning heavily into illness and inadequacy when not floating on fantasies of power) and also a symptom of her country’s illness. Almost constantly laughing, she is – obviously – unreliable. But EtC blends persona into hyper-confessionalism to open a space for honesty – the hope is that the spectacle of Elsie exercising her fraught and limited freedoms in the context of cultural, social, and environmental disasters might provide a point of critique, in order to readjust the values shaping our experience so as to move toward ways of being in the world that might be wiser, kinder, more sane, and more real.

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

Book Review :: Field Guide to Graphic Literature

Field Guide to Graphic Literatury book cover image

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Graphic Literature: Artists and Writers on Creating Graphic Narratives, Poetry Comics, and Literary Collage edited by Kelcey Ervick and Tom Hart is the newest in the publisher’s Field Guide series. To say my mind was blown when I first thumbed through this collection would be an understatement. When I settled into reading it and working through the chapters, I intermittently laughed out loud with a kind of incredulous glee that such a book exists.

Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics is probably the most popularly noted book on the subject of comic study and the tome that allowed many teachers to legitimize the incorporation of comics into academic classrooms. It’s the most oft-cited in this collection of essays, and while mentioned respectfully each time, there is a recognition of the limitation of his work, and in some cases, disagreements or differences of perspective. Each contributor who cites it does so as the starting point for furthering the dialogue in new concepts and theories on the practice of creating and reading contemporary graphic literature – pushing the conversation way outside the traditional comic frame.

Continue reading “Book Review :: Field Guide to Graphic Literature”

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week – July 10, 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!

Your Impossible Voice Spring 2023 cover image

Your Impossible Voice nonprofit online lit mag takes its name from “Phrases” by Arthur Rimbaud, “Bind yourself to us with your impossible voice, your voice! sole soother of this vile despair.” Issue 28 (Spring 2023) cover art is “A Different Recollection Than Yours” by Edward Lee.

86 Logic Issue 9 cover image

86 Logic Issue 9 is a print publication with sleek graphic design for both text and art throughout. The cover was commissioned from artist Tom Liesegang, whose work and an interview are included inside as well.

Yolk Literary Magazine Summer 2023 cover image

Montreal-based Yolk Literary Magazine publishes Canadian artists in print as well as offers unique online content. The cover art for their Summer 2023 issue is by Sophie Edell and captures a quintessential image of summer.

To find more great literary magazines, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Magazine Stand :: The Writing Disorder – Summer 2023

The Writing Disorder Summer 2023 cover image

The Summer 2023 issue of The Writing Disorder offers readers all new fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art to keep the season going. Featured contributors include fiction by Jennifer Blake, Rozanne Charbonneau, amy g dahla, Jonas David, Brad Gottschalk, Tina Dolly Ilangoven, Paul Perilli, Ellis Shuman; poetry by George Capaccio, Beatrice Feng, Sydney Fisher, Ron Riekki, Mykyta Ryzhykh, Scott Taylor; nonfiction by Sydney Hollins-Holloway, Eric Lee, Jonathan Kruyer, Steve Schecter, Rita Stevens; and art by Maja Lindberg.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Prumont Method

The Prumont Method by Trevor J. Houser book cover image

The Prumont Method by Trevor J. Houser
Unsolicited Press, August 2023

Staring down the barrel of a crumbling career and imploding marriage, “math hobbyist” Roger Prumont, unwittingly creates a formula that might predict when and where the next mass shooting occurs. He hits the road (where he’s joined by his unimpressed daughter) to test whether the Method could actually save lives. Except what if mass shootings are so ubiquitous now that his predictions are merely dumb luck? And what if he’s risking his own life to find out?

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

Book Review :: Maamoul Press

Maamoul Press logo

At the 2023 Chicago Zine Fest, I met Maamoul Press, “a multi-disciplinary small press and collective for the creation, curation and dissemination of art at the intersection of comics, printmaking, and book arts.” The submission criteria includes “by-us-for-us” storytelling which need not be strictly autobiographical, but should be “rooted in some way in the writer or artist’s lived experience,” for “works by BIPOC women, trans, and non-binary artists.” I selected several publications from the Maamoul Press table, as I was interested in how each is unique in content and style.

Loneliness by Reimena Yee book cover image

Loneliness by Reimena Yee is a ten-page zine coursing through the author’s relationship with loneliness, from youth to adulthood. Not always ‘getting along’ with being alone, but finding the joy and beauty in it, nonetheless. Yee reveals how she copes with and even welcomes loneliness into her life. An uplifting and empowering perspective for all of us solitary dwellers out there. The images are mainly black and grayscale, a few brown/sepia tones, on ivory paper. (10pp, 2020)

The Insubordinate by Rawand Issa book cover image

The Insubordinate by Rawand Issa is a bilingual (Arabic/English) full-color graphic novel ‘do-si-do’ style, showing more of the publisher’s book arts skills. Its story is based on real events that took place in Beirut between October 8, 2015, and March 20, 2017, following a young woman’s demonstration participation and arrest. Her case was turned over to the Military Court and her lawyer fights to have the case thrown out since it is a civilian and not a military matter. Issa’s use of multiple thick lines and hard edges creating geometric shapes adds intensity to the story as it ramps up and unfolds. A disturbing narrative experience in a stylishly beautiful presentation.

The Layover by Soumya Dhulekar book cover image

I selected The Layover by Soumya Dhulekar for its two-color risograph print and its all-too-familiar mundane storyline of layover waiting in an airport, banal exchanges between strangers, and the connections we make in surreal yet familiar ways. The graphic style is a perfect vehicle of expression for this story experience. (12pp, 2019)

Reviewer bio: Denise Hill is Editor of NewPages.com and reviews books she chooses based on her own personal interests.