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!
As July winds down, we’re gearing up for our next Friday Inspiration Prompt and Where to Submit Roundup—arriving August 1st. Time flies, doesn’t it? Even when it’s not all sunshine and creativity.
Aside from doing the normal routines, NewPages has been kicking around some innovations for our Bookstore Guide. These indie bookstores are hubs of inspiration and community. Check out our guide to find one near you—you might discover a cozy spot to work, read, and connect with kindred spirits. Who knows? They might just become part of your chosen family.
Inspiration Prompt: The Family We Choose
Family isn’t always inherited. Sometimes, it’s built—through love, loyalty, and the quiet decision to show up when no one had to.
Think about the people who stepped in, stood by, or shaped your life in unexpected ways. Maybe it was a step-parent, a mentor, a friend who became a sibling, or a partner who helped you feel seen. Maybe it’s a community that redefined what home means.
This week, write about the people who became family by choice.
It’s been a long time coming—with a few bumps and critical errors along the way (thank goodness for development sites!)—but we’re thrilled to announce a brand-new feature in our Guide to Indie Bookstores: Map It.
This handy link takes you directly to a bookstore’s location in Google Maps, making it easier than ever to find and navigate to your local indie bookseller. Whether you’re on your phone or desktop, it’s been tested to work smoothly across devices.
We hope this new feature not only helps you discover nearby gems but also inspires a bookstore road trip of your own. Happy exploring—and happy reading!
In her poem, “Dead Leaves and Lost Daughters,” Elizabeth Sylvia writes, “Mania splits the mind like a pomegranate, red shell vexed / to mount a spine of arils. Memory, a scattering of seeds.” These seeds are planted throughout Sylvia’s newest collection, My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties. Here, memories take the form of ex-boyfriends, Facebook posts of an old mothers’ group, the shame of a father’s “rattly car / he bought off the town drunk. . .” The anxiety, rendered masterfully by this poet’s clear-eyed writing, is the ever-present tightrope balance between the speaker and her past, which lies fitfully on her shoulders.
The concept of the mother — both the speaker’s and the speaker as mother — underscores this tension. In her sonnet crown, “Mother’s Day,” Sylvia writes, “Midlife heat / flares in my chest, igniting old hurts.” The speaker’s estrangement from her mother is compounded by her own mothering,
“See,” I tell no one
who is listening, “I’ve fucked up less
than others might have, not let emotion
curdle into rage, repressed regrets” —
and still, I know my own daughter sees
I haven’t spoken to my mom in weeks.
The sonnet — that little song — is the perfect form for this emotional struggle. The sonnet insists upon constriction, both in line length and in sound. Sylvia constructs a sense of stasis by writing a crown of seven sonnets, each linked by motherhood, and by enclosing the whole poem with “I haven’t spoken to my mom in weeks.” Thus, Mother’s Day becomes every day.
The image of the bird — both constricted and free — flits throughout this book: a goldfinch, sparrows, angelic herons, “the grey cockatiel” in its cage, a “wired golden bird,” and “birds’ sleeping tears.” This last image, from “the largest possible quantity of anything is a lifetime,” where the speaker notes how moths will feed off a bird’s tears, and continues with clarity,
We are
filled & yet float on the tears of others.
In this lifetime, I too have drawn shares
and scavenged from the sorrows
of others for my own pale-nighted wings.
The poems in this collection are tender, honest, and graceful. Like the speaker’s daughter who stares at her with “solemn / weighing eyes,” My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties is large in what it encompasses, in its voice, and in its compassion. Elizabeth Sylvia insists that our lives are full of “great things even in their commonness.”
Reviewer bio: Jennifer Martelli is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree and The Queen of Queens, both longlisted by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her work has appeared in Poetry and The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day. A Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER.
If you care about libraries and want to understand how recent decisions will impact the role they play in our culture, the newest issue of The Political Librarian is a good place to start. Published by the EveryLibrary Institute, The Political Librarian is “dedicated to expanding the discussion of, promoting research on, and helping to re-envision locally focused advocacy, policy, and funding issues for libraries.”
The newest issue (8.1, 2025) is a special issue: “The 2024 Election and the Future of Libraries” and features articles like “Sentiments on the State of Libraries After the Election” by Andrew Thomas Sulavik, “Thank You for Your Service to the American Public: A Perspective from a Fired Federal Worker” by Carrie Price, “Information Literacy Should Be About Democracy, Not Databases” by Stephen Kiel, “Culture War by Executive Order: President Trump’s Cultural Directives and the Threat to Libraries and Museums” by John Chrastka, “Fight if You Can Win. Otherwise, Negotiate.” by Bill Crowley, “Safeguarding Libraries, Schools, and Communities from Political Threats: A Strategic Framework for Engagement, Advocacy, and Sustainable Organizing” by Kacey Carpenter, and many more that can be read free access on the Open Scholarship platform at Washington University Libraries, ISSN: 2471-3155.
Heat and humidity are rolling through the Midwest again. If you’re lucky enough to be enjoying a break from the summer swelter, step outside and soak it in—no popsicle-melting today!
If you’re already stuck in the sticky grip of summer, stay cool indoors and dive into this week’s writing inspiration. Our latest newsletter features fresh lit mag issues, new books, indie bookstores to support, and more. But today, we’re spotlighting the writing prompt—one that’s inspired by revisiting Jane Austen, who masterfully explored the social constraints and quiet rebellions of women in her time.
Writing Prompt: It’s Not a Malady, Milady!
For centuries, women’s emotions, intellect, and resistance were dismissed as “hysteria,” “the vapors,” or “histrionics.” Pain was pathologized. Ambition? Called unnatural. A woman’s voice? Too loud. Too much. Too emotional.
This week, we reclaim those words—and rewrite the narrative.
What was once labeled a malady is, in truth, a mark of power. Your intuition, your fire, your refusal to shrink—these are not symptoms to be cured. They are evidence of your strength, your lineage, your legacy.
Write in honor of the women who were silenced, institutionalized, or ignored. Write for those who whispered their truths into diaries, letters, and poems that never saw the light. Most importantly, write for yourself—and for the future.
🖋️ Prompt Ideas to Explore
What part of yourself have you been told is “too much”?
How can you reframe it as a gift?
Create a poem, essay, or story that celebrates this part of you—not as a flaw, but as a force. Or craft a multimedia piece or collage that bridges history with modern expressions of womanhood. Reclaim what others saw as “flaws” and reveal them for what they truly are: your superpowers.
📬 Want More Prompts Like This?
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Historian of education Diane Ravitch was once a prolific writer and speaker on the U.S. right. As a fervent opponent of feminism and other contemporary social movements, she spent more than three decades championing education reforms that included charter schools, vouchers, and rigorous standardized testing. These positions not only won her plaudits from conservative leaders and think tanks, but also led to high-level positions in the administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and hobnobbing with the powerful.
Over time, however, skepticism began to seep in and Ravitch began to question her long-held beliefs. “I saw that the toxic policy of federally mandated high-stakes testing was inflicting harm on students and teachers by establishing unattainable goals and demonizing public schools,” she writes in An Education. She also began to recognize the class and racial bias endemic to standardized testing, noting that high scores typically reflect access to wealth and privilege rather than intelligence or the ability to learn. Moreover, she saw that schools were failing to achieve their mission. “The experience of schooling should prepare young people to live and work with others in a democratic society and to contribute to the improvement of that society. Schools should encourage students to be the best they can be, not to be standardized into a preset mold.”
But they are not doing this.
An Education, part memoir and part analysis of failed state and federal reforms, takes contemporary policy makers to task for this failure. Honest, forthright, and wise, it’s an inside glimpse into the machinations of power from someone who has seen how ideas are used, manipulated, and sold to the public. It’s an important and insightful contribution to the field of educational policy and a passionate defense of public education.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
The newest issue of Offcourse Literary Journal (#101) is now available for readers to enjoy online. Since 1998, Offcourse Literary Journal has published diverse international literature — poems, stories, essays, and more — four times yearly, featuring authors globally with English translations. This June 2025 issue features “How long does it take to count 100?” a meditation by Lois Greene Stone, “The Mayor’s Peacocks,” a story by Harvey Sutlive, “Ode to Noses” and other poems by Sarah White, as well as works by Ruth Bavetta, Allain Blaithin, Rose Mary Boehm, Tony Dawson, Louis Gallo, John Grey, Kathleen Hellen, Robert Klose, Miriam Kotzin, Ricardo Nirenberg, James Penha, Marci Rich, Barry Seiler, Ian C. Smith, Harvey Sutlive, Kyle Walsh, and Sarah White with Rose Mary Boehm’s review of Gary Grossman’s Objects in the Mirror may be Closer than they Appear. All content is available to read open access online.
In The Book Eaters, Carolina Hotchandani presents poignant self-portraits as “a daughter,” “a mother,” and “a maker,” exploring themes of consumption, nourishment, and absorption. Across three impactful sections, the poet navigates her compelling “need to write / about my home, my ailing parents.” In her lyric poems, Hotchandani confronts her father’s language loss and impending death while grappling with her mother’s cancer diagnosis, all interwoven with the joys and trials of motherhood.
Hotchandani examines the complexities of her identity, shaped by her Brazilian mother and Indian father, and her experiences of giving birth to a daughter and writing poetry. Explicit in her exploration is the significance of Partition, representing not only a historical moment but also the emotional fragmentation echoing through generations. This duality of identity emerges incisively in Hotchandani’s roles as mother and writer, encapsulated in the lines: “As the baby drinks from my body my / milk, I edit my manuscript.” These words suggest that as the infant seeks nourishment, the mother-writer simultaneously seeks sustenance in ideas.
The poems vividly illustrate the interplay between losing and acquiring language, revealing how these experiences affect one’s sense of belonging — to oneself, family, and cultural heritage. In striking contrast, Hotchandani evokes imagery of insects infesting books against her father’s relentless hunger for fruit, symbolizing a haunting cycle of life and decay. “Satiation depends on the memory / of eating” encapsulates the insatiable nature of loss in the face of physical existence. Through these metaphors, Hotchandani also illustrates the struggles of motherhood and the weighty expectations imposed on women, raising questions about the gendered division of labor: How can a mother nourish herself while caring for another?
Ultimately, The Book Eaters artfully intertwines language, memory, and hunger, illuminating universal experiences of longing and loss in a debut that is “a love story, a bildungsroman,” and a book “to greet the real world.”
The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani. Perugia Press, September 2023.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.
It’s difficult to believe that The Names is Florence Knapp’s debut novel, as she easily handles three storylines, fully developing characters who are similar in each one. The novel begins with Cora going to register her new son’s name, walking with her nine-year-old-daughter Maia. In one of the three plots that follow, Cora listens to her daughter and names her son Bear. In the second, she selects Julian, while in the third, she follows her husband’s demand and names her son after his father, Gordon. Each choice affects the path they all take from that point forward, which Knapp updates every seven years, moving from 1987 to 2022.
In all three storylines, Cora’s husband is physically and emotionally abusive, which means that her decision about the name has an outsized effect. Knapp’s characterization of Cora’s rebellion or acquiescence to her husband, depending on the storyline, is one of the strengths of the novel, as all of her actions are understandable, given how women react in radically different ways in such a horrific situation. The one constant throughout is her devotion to her children, even when that looks radically different in each storyline.
What truly elevates this novel beyond what could be a gimmicky premise is that Knapp doesn’t fall back on easy plotting. If, in one storyline, Cora is able to leave her husband and try to create a different life for her children, the remainder of the story doesn’t guarantee an easy life for her or her children. Instead, each variation has complications and rewards, just as a life does for most people.
While the focus of the novel is on Bear, Julian, or Gordon (his names are the chapter titles for each seven-year increment), Cora is the backbone of the novel, helping to shape Maia and Bear into the people they become. Maia also gets to live a full life, as she questions her sexual orientation and tries to develop meaningful relationships in more or less supportive communities. All of the character’s names matter — Knapp has even provided a type of glossary at the back to show what the names mean and/or why Knapp chose them — as Knapp explores how names do and don’t define us. She also wants to ask how and why pasts shape us. As in life, she doesn’t provide easy answers, but I definitely wanted to spend time with these characters to see how they managed the questions.
The Names by Florence Knapp. Pamela Dorman Books, 2025.
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. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
Deadline: August 15, 2025 Inverted Syntax is where the margins take center stage. Now accepting submissions for our annual poetry book contests: the Sublingua Prize (for debut collections by female-identifying writers) and the Aggrey & Tabbikha Prize (for first or second books by Black and/or S.W.A.N.A writers). Winners receive $500, publication, a retreat, and more. Fissured Tongue Vol. VII also open. View flyer for more information and submit here.
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We have a host of new workshops coming up. All are offered on a sliding scale.
Writing through Conflict: A free nonfiction workshop for emerging writers
The Grammar of History, the Syntax of War (Poetry)
Writing Sci-Fi War Stories
Bringing the Receipts: Using Personal Documents as Prompts to Write about the Past (Fiction and Nonfiction)
Click here for the full class descriptions or to register. Thank you.
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Registration Open Now You’ve been dreaming about publishing your novel long enough! It’s time to make the next move toward getting it done. Come to Wildacres Writers Commercial Fiction Workshop in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of NC this fall for a workshop geared toward preparing your novel and submission packet for its best chance at landing a deal. Whether you’re planning to seek an agent or editor, publish with large or small press, or indie publish your own novel, this workshop will help you put your best book forward. Visit the website for all the details! Space is limited on this one! Act fast!
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Livingston Press will be reading through September. We are looking for novels, linked story collections, and narrative poetry. Send complete work, along with a bio to [email protected]. Check out our flyer for new summer releases.
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What She Saw in the Lotería Cards by M. Garcia Teutsch is a poetry collection that can be understood as a cartography of identity—mapping emotional, cultural, familial, and bodily terrains. The use of Lotería cards is more than decorative—it offers a mythopoetic framework that grounds intimate, raw stories in universal symbols. For more on the author go here: www.poetrepublik.com.
JOIN us for SOMOS’ 9th Annual Taos Writers Conference, in beautiful Taos, New Mexico, July 25th—27th, 2025, featuring keynote speaker, memoirist, & poet, Nick Flynn (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City). Over twenty workshops in every genre. Conference includes receptions, keynote reading, lunch roundtable discussions on publishing, faculty readings, and book sales. FYI: view our flyer, visit our website, or call 575-758-0081.
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What is it that makes a region unique? That’s the question we want to answer. America’s North Coast, defined for this anthology as adjacent to Lake Erie from Toledo to Buffalo and even Michigan. In their voices, we want to hear the poetic stories of those who have lived, worked, vacationed or just passed through this region. Deadline: September 1.See flyer and visit website for more information.
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The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors become members to: keep up with changes in the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing, gain greater visibility for their writing, join a group of like-minded people who love writing. View our flyer to see new releases by members and learn more at our website.
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Things aren’t always as they seem and in issue 91 of Kaleidoscope several contributors share stories that require a shift in perspective to see things differently. Each issue of the magazine explores the experience of disability through the lens of literature and fine art. Submit your best work to us today! View flyer and visit our website for more information.
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With the rain comes a cool, windy break from the heat—but don’t worry, the 80s will be back soon enough. If you’re enjoying a brief respite from summer’s swelter, we hope you’re able to spend some time outdoors without the usual bug battalion.
Too chilly for your taste? It’s the perfect excuse to cozy up with your laptop and dive into your writing and submission goals. And if you’re not sure where to begin, NewPages has you covered with this week’s creative writing prompt and a fresh roundup of literary submission opportunities.
Inspiration Prompt: The Rusty Years
We often hear that life after 65 is the beginning of the “golden years”—a time of rest, reward, and reflection. A period when retirement brings freedom, joy, and the chance to finally enjoy the fruits of a life well-lived.
But what if that sheen is just a myth?
What if, instead of golden, these years are rusty?
Laura Cesarco Eglin’s English translation of Mexican poet Gabriela Aguirre’s The Mistaken Place of Things invites readers to peer through “the window / through which things happen.” Through the windows of deserts, photographs, bodies, hospitals, dreams, and language, Aguirre navigates the themes of presence and absence — “distance exists / …it’s not just / a word repeated in my writing.” Estrangement, dislocation, and dissociation emerge as Aguirre expresses, “I write it how I feel it.”
Though Aguirre articulates the complexities of being both out of body and out of mind, her writing remains intimate, flowing like a heartfelt letter, blending candor with a dreamlike quality. For Aguirre, distance becomes a lens for perspective and understanding: “The desert I’ve come to know is also that: / a city I’m no longer in.”
As she traverses corporeal, material, and phenomenal landscapes, Aguirre emphasizes the independent existence of people, objects, and places beyond subjective perception. Her focus shifts from mere remembrance — “Something / to extract” — to a process of reliving and rethinking. By recounting experiences with friends, hospital stays, and conversations with her mother, she reframes the nature of reality itself.
“Things are not in their place.” As Aguirre attempts “to piece together this scene,” a palpable discomfort surfaces: a “pain that’s too explicit” prickles the senses, evoking the “pins of loss” as readers grapple to “name the sadness.” Yet, Aguirre understands that naming can lead to avoidance, so she offers just enough to immerse readers in the feelings of loss. Her poetics reflect an aftermath: “about the horror of watching the earth / take the ones you love.”
Laura Cesarco Eglin’s attentive translations allow deep engagement with Gabriela Aguirre’s poems, revealing writing “on the verge” of disclosure. In the haunting conclusion, Aguirre poignantly reflects, “Poetry couldn’t save you, my friend,” leaving us with the resonant question, “What will you take after taking these legs?” This echoes the fleeting temporality of existence.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.
Kaleidoscope explores the experience of disability through literature and the fine arts, and the Summer/Fall 2025 issue (#91) is available now. Things are not always as they seem and coming to this realization usually requires a shift in perspective, a lesson learned by young and old alike in this issue.
In the featured essay, “Iron Girl,” Cassandra Brandt was a rarity as an iron worker and welder in a field that was predominately male. At thirty-two, she was a strong, fearless, self-sufficient, and adventurous single mom of a thirteen-year-old daughter. She felt at home on a construction site, hard hat and steel-toed boots on, climbing onto beams several floors above the ground. When a car accident left her paralyzed from the chest down, she went from fiercely independent to utterly dependent in the blink of an eye. It would take time for her to redefine herself and recover her mental toughness.
Artist Erika Marie York is featured in this issue along with many talented writers: Jennifer Lee Austin, David Bachmann, Notty Bumbo, Douglas G. Campbell, Mimi Eagar, Hannah Ehrlich, Elly Katz, Isolde Keilhofer, Rowan MacDonald, Allegra M. Marcell, Deb Robert, Wendy Sheehan, Naomi Stenberg, Poppy Reeves, Mary Ellen Talley, Joseph Trance, Susan Levi Wallach, Devon Wells, and Emily Yates.
Monday was wild—but aren’t they always? Issue 189 of our weekly newsletter is packed with literary goodness: 📚 New books 📰 Fresh lit mag issues 🏪 Indie bookstores to support 📝 Book reviews 📣 49 Submission opportunities …and of course, a brand-new inspiration prompt to get your creative gears turning.
This week’s chaos got us reminiscing about the delightfully disastrous Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), and just like that—poof!—this week’s NewPages writing prompt was born.
click image to open flyer
✍️ Inspiration Prompt: A Series of Unfortunate Events
Because sometimes, the chaos writes itself.
Ever had one of those days where everything goes sideways? You’re not alone. This week’s NewPages writing prompt was inspired by a real-life comedy of errors involving a birthday mix-up, endless back-and-forths, and a traffic jam that felt like the universe pressing pause.
We’re calling it: “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”
Whether you’re a nonfiction writer, poet, fiction lover, or visual artist, this prompt invites you to explore the beauty, absurdity, and unexpected clarity that can emerge from life’s messiest moments.
Here’s a taste of what you can do with it:
Nonfiction: Chronicle a day that spiraled out of control. What went wrong? What did you learn?
Fiction: Create a character whose plans unravel in spectacular fashion.
Poetry: Use rhythm and imagery to capture the chaos.
Visual Art: Illustrate a moment of beautiful frustration.
Sarah Vogel’s life has been a series of losses as well as lucky breaks. Her birth in Auschwitz coincided with her mother’s death, but women in the concentration camp did what they could to ensure her survival. Time in Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen followed. Then liberation, adoption by the Vogelmann family until, at 15, she is sent to live with someone new. Escape to Berlin came next, along with her first romantic encounter. Then, thanks to the Jewish Immigrant Resettlement Program, she met people whose job it was to help her find her way. At first, emigrating to Israel seemed alluring, but Sarah ultimately opted for the US. First, however, she gave birth to a daughter, conceived during a hasty hook-up with a Russian soldier.
For a time, she and Sasha lived in Queens, NY, where she found work as a custodian at a local college. A series of promotions, as well as an affair with a married professor, offered both heartbreak and opportunity, the upshot of which was a move to Ohio, where Sarah took an administrative job at Kent State. There, she married Walter, and together, they raised a family.
Becoming Sarah tells this fictional story, tracking four generations of Vogel women and covering more than 100 years, from Sarah’s birth in 1942 to the 100th anniversary of the end of the war in 2045. It’s a sweeping look at the Holocaust’s impact on successive generations, even when the actual facts of Sarah’s experience are neither discussed nor disclosed to her offspring or partners. It’s also an in-depth personality profile of an astoundingly passive — and simultaneously fatalistic, fierce, and independent — woman, someone who never hired a private investigator or tried to find Sasha after she vanished. It’s unclear why.
Becoming Sarah is an unusual and deeply moving peek into the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust — leavened with occasional humor — about a flawed but believably-human protagonist and the positive and negative influence she cast on subsequent generations of family members.
Becoming Sarah by Diane Botnick. She Writes Press, October 2025.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
The latest issue “Summer 2025” (Vol. 2, Issue 2) of Cool Beans Lit features 25 talented authors and artists of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art that capture the sharp human element and unpredictable nature of our current state. Some of the pieces involve themes of upending stages of life, a comedic view on the pervasiveness of social media influencers, a true tale of sudden life-altering hearing loss, and the struggle of an immigrant seeking a new life by means of escape and survival. These contributors represent a broad range of backgrounds, experience, and viewpoints and hail from several countries and walks of life, including physicians, educators, actors, editors and novices, as well as seasoned authors/artists and best sellers. Take a break and dip a toe in this refreshing summer issue of Cool Beans Lit.
Dream Count, Adichie’s first novel since 2014’s Americanah, picks up some of the same themes, especially around romantic relationships and race in America. However, this novel focuses much more on the relationships, as well as the expectations the four women at the core of this novel face. Chiamaka is a freelance travel writer from Nigeria, now living in America, who spends the Covid pandemic looking back on her “dream count,” the number of relationships she has had that haven’t ultimately led to marriage. Zikora, one of her best friends, is a lawyer who has a daughter that the father abandoned. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s cousin, is the most financially successful of them all, as she has become wealthy through questionable, but supposedly common, banking practices in Nigeria.
One of the main plotlines, though, centers around Kadiatou, a character Adichie modeled on Nafissatou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant who accused a powerful hotel guest of sexual assault. Through that part of the novel, Adichie explores the ways culture, including other women, discount women’s stories of assault and rape. Adichie uses fiction to explore what one woman might feel in that situation, especially in unexpected ways.
Adichie’s novel draws heavily on cultural events of the past decade or so, such as the pandemic or Diallo’s assault, but, at times, that focus limits the novel. Adichie has been vocal about the rush to judgment that can happen on social media, the condemnation that comes before a trial that can ruin people’s lives and careers. Omelogor gives voice to such ideas in the novel, as she attends graduate school in the U.S. for a brief time, and her comments sound both defensive and antagonistic without the nuance of an equally strong voice to balance her ideas.
As in Adichie’s previous work, though, the focus is on the relationships and the way friends and family continue to pressure these women to follow a traditionally feminine path of marriage and motherhood. They are all successful in their own way, but those around them often question that success and the cost of it, even leading to the women doubting themselves, but Adichie provides them with full, rich lives, showing that there are a number of ways women can live in the world.
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Alfred A. Knopf, March 2025.
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. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
In Songs for the Land-Bound, Violeta Garcia-Mendoza sings of “memory, art, turbulence” in a woman’s relationship to motherhood, marriage, aging, writing, spirituality, and “wilderness.” Garcia-Mendoza’s assured and refined debut, divided into six bird-ornamented sections, documents the “complications” of her subjects by employing contrasting modes of discourse that illustrate the “fights between” and “the opposite effect” of dichotomous thinking, creating a dynamic interplay between coupling and countering within the choices of poetic form, linear organization, and noun constructions.
Garcia-Mendoza juxtaposes various forms: a nocturne counters an aubade, odes oppose an epithalamium, the prose of a haibun contrasts with the verse of a sonnet, the erasure found in a collage compares to the patchwork technique of a cento, and still lifes stand in contrast to “dioramas.” Within these forms, lines are often stanzaically organized in couplets or tercets, reinforcing the interplay of coupling and countering. This duality is also expressed in word pairings such as “the conditional, the subjunctive”; “relentlessness or restlessness”; and “bless & burn,” as well as through the progressions of three nouns: “starlings, selfies, sinkholes”; “soldier, poet, or king”; “color, time, light.” Gentle enjambment highlights the poet’s fine attention to the potential meanings that arise from additive and oppositional units of meaning.
Garcia-Mendoza’s narrative-lyric poems cycle “if, when, where” while considering “the carrion, the carry on, the carrying” that defines the life of a middle-aged woman. As the poet considers a “sense of life debt,” she acknowledges the “dread and marvel” of language, wilderness, and familylife, each seen as a “romance / with the unreliable,” “bearing / darkness.”
To counter the notion of “solastalgia,” the poet denies nothing but makes deliberate choices. She asserts: “My moral code is making”; “Revision means survival.” Violeta Garcia-Mendoza’s Songs for the Land-Bound are “illuminant over the scar.” Her poems of “wreckage strung with violets” — “music, all of it.”
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.
Happy Friday! Can you believe the month is already halfway over next week? Time really flies! With so much to do and so little time, I hope you’re finding moments to enjoy nature this summer with the people you love.
Don’t forget the essentials: sunscreen, bug spray, and plenty of water. Not a fan of plain water? Try flavored hydration drops—they’re especially helpful for those stubborn folks who resist staying hydrated. Cucumbers are also a great, refreshing option!
But I digress…
If you’re not able to get away just yet, NewPages is here to keep your creativity flowing. We’ve got fun writing and art prompts and submission opportunities to help you stay on track with your writing goals until you can shift to vacation mode.
🧠Inspiration Prompt: Face Pareidolia
Sounds intense, right? Face Pareidolia—is it a condition? A disease? A new form of body dysmorphia? Actually, it’s nothing scary at all.
Face pareidolia is the brain’s quirky tendency to see faces in everyday objects. Ever looked up at a cloud and seen not just a bunny or a dragon, but the face of a wise old wizard? Or maybe your pet rock “Bob” reminded you of Bob Ross, thanks to its spongey-looking “afro” and facial features?
Let your imagination run wild—what faces do you see in the world around you?
In Walking the Burn, Rachel Kellum thoughtfully intertwines literal and metaphorical language to explore the devastation wrought by fire, both in nature and within personal lives. The “burn” symbolizes not only the physical destruction marked by “a ring of char” and the “black skeletons / of juniper,” but also deeper emotional scars, including betrayals, injuries, and societal issues connected to Mormon patriarchy, sibling death, relationship failures, mental illness, and racial injustice. Kellum’s central question: “How did we get here?”
The collection is structured into three sections — Arise, Abide, and Dissolve — mirroring the process of mindfulness and inviting readers to engage in introspective reflection. The narrative unfolds from Kellum’s childhood, addressing themes of familial trauma and the complexities of relationships with her father, intimate partners, and sons, before transitioning to a focus on aging, grief, healing, and forgiveness.
Kellum’s autobiographical poems resonate with authenticity as she candidly navigates the stark contrasts between societal expectations and personal realities. Her vulnerability reveals the tensions that persist not just in her life but within broader social landscapes. Notably poignant are the series of poems that hold vigil for murdered Black men, including Philando Castille, Terrance Crutcher, and George Floyd. Kellum invokes their names while being conscious of her place in their narratives. While she tries “Not to make this story” hers, her experience in an interracial relationship informs the outrage, grief, and anxiety apparent in these poems.
In one moment, Kellum reflects on the difficulty of “saying less,” recognizing the weight of her words. Each poem radiates a “clear promise,” attesting to her roles as a daughter, sister, lover, and mother, all while serving a greater purpose for family and society. Ultimately, in Walking the Burn, Kellum invites us to walk alongside her through both the beauty and devastation of life’s experiences.
Walking the Burn by Rachel Kellum. Middle Creek Publishing, March 2025.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.
Borderlines: An Astral Experience in Poems by Alan Botsford Cyberwit.com, April 2025
“A wonderful gang of talkative alter egos meets the ego in a cosmic expatriate bar and the ego tells their story, which is the intriguing inner and outer story of the poet Alan Botsford himself.” — Sarah Arvio, author of Cry Back My Sea: 48 Poems in 6 Waves
“In these poems of self and world, an American abroad, living in Japan, with a copy of Walt Whitman under his arm, sets out on the open road of the imagination, absorbing and transcending cultural constructions of that very self and world, ventriloquizing voices that speak back frequently at and to the author, as they embody multitudes, exemplifying the interconnectedness and contingency of identity, language, place, and emotion. Borderlines offers a new vision, looking both ways, inward and outward, ahead and behind, crossing borders, in an embrace centered ultimately in love.” — Michael Sowder, author of Sacred Letters: Sanskrit, Yoga, and Awakening the Divine
Alan Botsford is an American poet, author, and professor born in Connecticut and living in Japan for many years, where he teaches in university. His poetry collections include Possessions: Poems in American Poetry and Dreamer: Poems in Culture, and the hybrid Walt Whitman of Cosmic Folklore.
Another summer holiday is behind us and it is so hard to let go, isn’t it?
If you’re taking your break this week instead of last, NewPages has plenty of food for your creative fodder!
In Issue 188 of the NewPages Newsletter, we bring you new issues of literary magazines, book reviews, 49 submission opportunities, and—of course—a prompt to inspire your creativity. And this time, the prompt is more of a challenge than anything else!
Inspiration Prompt: The Scintillating Story of Sister “S”
Sometimes, the best way to break through a creative block is to give yourself a constraint—and this week, we’re spotlighting one of the most slippery, stylish letters in the alphabet: S.
Whether you’re a poet, prose writer, doodler, or essayist, here are a few playful ways to let “S” lead the way:
Write a poem where every line starts with “S”
Craft a story in which each sentence (or paragraph) begins with “S”
Draw a doodle composed only of items starting with “S”
Make a collage devoted to all forms of “S”—lowercase, uppercase, cursive, serif, sans-serif
Pen an ode to the curves of the letter itself
Explore an essay on “S”—its history, phonetics, or popularity
Feeling bold? Try the Super S Challenge: Every single word in a sentence or line must start with “S.” (Silly? Sure. Stimulating? Surprisingly so.)
Straw-grasping or not, what does pushing yourself to follow such a constraint do for your creative process? Does it reinvigorate it? Help you pay more attention to rhythm and flow? Or does it feel synonymous with a different kind of roadblock?
💌 Love prompts like this? Subscribe to the NewPages Weekly Newsletter for more creative inspiration, fresh submission opportunities, literary magazine highlights, and book reviews delivered straight to your inbox.
Using the natural world as both mirror and lens, the poems in Denton Loving’s third collection of poetry explore themes of connection, longing, and the pursuit of a fully lived life. They celebrate “the light that enters the woods and cleanses the wound.” They seek the sacred order in everything, from the phases of the moon down to the delicate colors of a moth’s wings. And yet, they are not cloistered away from the human struggle — whether with nature, with each other, or with the self. Feller envisions our environment and landscape, not as backdrop or ornament but as revelatory forces illuminating the hidden chambers of the self. At once deeply rooted in his Appalachian soil and universally resonant, Feller confirms Loving’s position among those rare poets who transmute a sense of place into profound human truth.
“Loving makes lyric sense of complex issues in poem after poem in Feller, with his special blend of eco-poetics and earthly reason.” — Elaine Sexton, Site Specific
“At once timely and timeless, Feller is a superbly striking and essential book.” — Matt W. Miller, Tender the River
“Reading Feller is a transformative, joyful, loneliness-alleviating experience.” — Annie Woodford, Where You Come From Is Gone
The theme for Blink-Ink Issue #60 is “Seeds,” which could mean a small thing that we plant and nurture to grow bigger things we need, or it could mean a promise, a hope, a plan to provide and to make things better. Seeds can also be where the future waits and dreams or even stays dormant, waiting for just the right moment to burst forth. Writers submitted their best stories of “around 50 words,” and those whose works were planted in this issue include Maddie W. White, Kathy Lynn Carroll, Anne Anthony, Richard Zboray, Vali Hawkins Mitchell, Sushmita Sridhar, S.A. Greene, Tracy Royce, Lisa Williams, Daryl Scroggins, Francine Witte, Ayesha Gallion, Jill Holtz, Carolyn R. Russell, Chris Bowen, Kate Noble, Rachel Turney, Sharon J. Clark, Rosaleen Lynch, Nadja Maril, Rowan Tate, and Marcy Arlin.
Kevin Wilson’s latest novel, Run for the Hills, continues to develop themes from his most recent works, especially the idea of family and what that looks like in the twenty-first century. The main character Mad — short for Madeline — lives on a successful farm in rural Tennessee with her mother, as her father left them when she was young, and she’s never heard from him again. A man just over a decade older shows up at their roadside stand claiming to be her half-brother, as his father left him and his mother, then started a new life in Tennessee.
This development leads to a road trip, as Rube — short for Reuben, as their father loved nicknames — has had a private investigator discover that their father has two more children and is now living yet another life in California. They drive across the country picking up Pep, short for Pepper, and Tom, short (sort of) for Theron, on their way to California.
They all share the same experience, that of their father leaving, but their father reinvented himself with each new family, moving from being a detective novelist to an organic farmer to a basketball coach to a camera man/filmmaker. Thus, while each child shares the same experience of abandonment, they each have a different view of their father.
Along the way, they bond with one another through their childhood trauma, but also their love for this man who was a good father to each of them until he left and never contacted them again. They each discover what it’s like to have siblings to rely on, to tease, and even to fight with. They know they’re going to have to go home again, no matter what they find at the end of the trip, but this newfound family may help them make peace with the lives they currently live.
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. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
There’s not much of a plot to relate from Yasmin Zaher’s debut novel, The Coin, as the unnamed narrator doesn’t do much. She’s teaching at a school for underprivileged boys, but she’s not invested in their learning, though she likes her students quite a bit. She has a relationship with Sasha, but he’s clearly more in love with her than she is with him. She begins a different relationship with an unhoused man she refers to as Trenchcoat — he picked up a trench coat she left outside of her apartment — as they buy high-end purses that they can then pass on to one of his friends who will sell them at a nice profit.
The plot, though, really isn’t the point of the novel. Instead, it’s more of a character study of a Palestinian woman who is stuck in her life, partly due to the trauma of never feeling like one belongs anywhere and partly due to the death of her parents when she was young. Their death led to her inheriting a great deal of money, so her life is superficially stable, though she goes through her monthly distribution quite quickly, largely due to her obsessive focus on cleanliness. She spends hours scrubbing away what she believes is dead skin, even seeing snakes that come out of her. She clearly sees herself as dirty, and she doesn’t believe anything she can do will ever help her be truly clean. The coin of the title is a reference to a coin she believes she swallowed when she was a child, but it also seems to refer to the part of her back that she cannot reach to clean, thus serving as a metaphor for her displacement, trauma, and survivor’s guilt.
Near the end of the novel she goes in the opposite direction, seemingly trying to recreate Palestine in her New York apartment, after a theft at the school reveals how little she understands her students. The narrator addresses a “you” throughout the novel, becoming more pronounced near the conclusion of the book, though it’s never quite clear whom it might be. There are hints that it could be a person at the beginning of a new relationship, but it also feels like it could be a manifestation of her lack of belonging. If so, she might be on the track to understanding herself a bit better, though the ending is vague, at best. Regardless, Zaher has clearly conveyed a character who is struggling to understand how to live in a world that doesn’t seem to want her and her people to exist at all.
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. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
Happy Friday and Happy Independence Day! Today is July 4, the day Americans celebrate Independence Day. Whether you’re staying cool at home or heading out to celebrate, NewPages has something for you. If you’re relaxing indoors, check out our fun writing prompt and submission opportunities to keep your creativity flowing. If you’re traveling or celebrating, no worries—our weekly roundup will be here when you’re ready.
Inspiration Prompt: Independence Day
Rather than focusing on traditional national independence celebrations, let’s explore a different angle. In 1994, country music artist Martina McBride released the powerful song “Independence Day,” written by Gretchen Peters. The song tells the story of a young girl whose mother, a victim of domestic abuse, takes a stand—marking a deeply personal and transformative “independence day” for them both.
This week, we invite you to reflect and soul search on the idea of personal independence.
What does your own “independence day” look like?
Maybe you finally left a toxic workplace or relationship.
Maybe you stepped into adulthood, fully independent from your family.
Maybe you overcame cancer or took control of your health after a pre-diabetes diagnosis.
Maybe you broke free from an addiction—whether to drugs, alcohol, or even something that seemed harmless but consumed you, like collecting rocks or scraps of paper.
Or, if you’d prefer to keep it fictional, imagine a world where independence is celebrated in a unique or unconventional way—or create a character who is desperately seeking freedom from something, anything—serious or seemingly silly, but deeply meaningful to them.
What would that journey look like?
Wishing you a safe, joyful, and creatively inspired holiday! When you’re ready, keep scrolling for this week’s roundup of submission opportunities.
Confessions, Catherine Airey’s debut novel, follows three generations of Irish women, moving from the 1970s to the 2020s, showing how each of them deal with discovering who they are, partly through love and relationships, but partly through art and culture, as well. The novel begins with Cora in New York City in 2001 as she was already struggling with stability, given the death of her mother. The death of her father begins to push her over the edge until a letter from her Aunt Róisín gives her a chance at a new life in rural Ireland.
In the 1970s, Róisín and her sister Máire watch as a group called The Screamers move into a house in their neighborhood, ultimately hiring Máire as an artist to catalog their life. Michael, the boy who lives next door, but who doesn’t fit in for his own reasons, loves Máire, but watches her ultimately move to New York to pursue her artistic desires, while Róisín stays home alone.
In 2018, Cora’s daughter Lyca lives in rural Ireland with her mother and Great Aunt Ró. Cora is one of the main activists working for legalization of abortion in Ireland, while Lyca looks through the old house as a means to understand herself and her family.
Given the title, the main irony of the novel is that the characters don’t often confess the truth to one another, as most of the revelations that come in the novel do so because a separate character finds out information about one of the others. Given the different points of view, readers often hear about one character from another, not from themselves. Thus, they all have to decide what they should reveal and what they should hide, usually out of a desire to protect.
Overall, Airey’s novel shows the struggles women have faced and continue to face — whether that’s abusive men, a culture that outlaws choice, or isolation that comes from their not following the dominant narrative —but also how they can support one another to build real community, at times.
Confessions by Catherine Airey. Mariner Books, January 2025.
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. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
The sunny new Summer 2025 issue (58.2) of Southern Humanities Review features poetry selected by Guest Poetry Editor Gabrielle Bates.
The issue includes poetry by Sean Cho A., Rhony Bhopla, Leia K. Bradley, Patrycja Humienik, Willie Lee Kinard III, Jeni O’Neal, and Mandy Shunnarah. Readers will also enjoy new nonfiction by Allison C. Macy-Steines and Julie Marie Wade, and fiction by Nwanne Agwu, Leslie Pietrzyk, Alyssa Quinn, and William Pei Shih.
Cover art by Jaye Bartell, Gray Stray Cat 68th Avenue, December, 2022. (Olympus Pen FT half-frame camera. Courtesy of the artist.)
Thunderstorms and rain swept through, trying their best to cool down the nearly 90-degree heat. Hopefully, you’re all staying cool and comfortable. Our weekly newsletter is here to help with that—packed with great reads to keep you inspired and plenty of submission opportunities to keep your writing goals on track. This week’s writing prompt explores the power of names in storytelling—how they shape identity, perception, and even destiny.
Speaking of which, let’s dive into that prompt and explore how the power of names can shape our stories—and ourselves.
Inspiration Prompt: What’s in a Name? More Than You Think.
A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, but Anne wasn’t so sure Shakespeare got that right (remember, she thought Ann was just dreadful).
In an era of high infant mortality, Japanese children were often given temporary names to ward off misfortune—only receiving their “true” names once they reached a safer age. The belief was simple but profound: names carry power.
Even in nature, names shape perception. Every plant has at least two: the scientific name—precise but often forgotten—and the common name, which varies by region and culture. Take the autumn olive, for example. Despite its poetic name, it’s not an olive tree at all. Scientifically known as Elaeagnus umbellata, it also goes by Japanese silverberry, spreading oleaster, and autumn berry. It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Yet in the U.S., it’s considered an invasive species—beautiful, but disruptive to native ecosystems.
It’s strange how something so beautiful can be misunderstood—or misjudged—because of a name.
In some communities, a family name alone can open doors—or close them. In schools, neighborhoods, and small towns, your last name might precede you like a rumor. Some names are spoken with admiration, others with disdain, long before anyone meets the person behind them. Maybe your uncle made headlines. Maybe your cousin got expelled. Maybe your last name means you’re always the troublemaker because of older siblings—or never taken seriously.
Somewhere out there, there’s a person whose entire job is to receive new products—lotions, gadgets, teas, sneakers—and test them, not for quality, but for identity. Their task? To find the name that tells a story, sparks curiosity, and makes someone fall in love at first glance. A name that whispers a story before the product is even touched. Imagine the power in that.
So, do you believe in the power of names? Have you ever liked something until you learned what it was called? Or disliked something, only to be won over by its name?
This week, let names guide your writing. Explore how they shape identity, perception, or even destiny. What stories lie hidden behind the names we give—or the ones we’re given?
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Want more inspiration prompts before committing?Dive in here and explore past prompts to spark your creativity.
Fragments of Cerulean is a surreal and emotionally resonant collection of short stories that blurs the boundaries between horror, memory, and myth. Structured in five evocative phases, this book invites readers into a world where the familiar becomes uncanny and the subconscious takes center stage. Each story is a journey through eerie landscapes — abandoned highways, sentient motel rooms, and cryptic machines that trade in secrets — crafted with immersive, cinematic prose.
This collection explores the fragile nature of identity and the haunting echoes of loss, transformation, and fear. With a tone that shifts between dreamlike introspection and psychological unease, the stories challenge perceptions of reality and self. Readers will encounter narratives that tug at the heart while unsettling the mind, offering a reading experience that is both emotionally raw and intellectually provocative.
Ideal for fans of atmospheric, genre-defying fiction, Fragments of Cerulean delivers a powerful blend of dark beauty and symbolic depth. It doesn’t offer easy resolutions — instead, it invites introspection and lingers long after the final page. Perfect for those drawn to the liminal, the strange, and the deeply human, this collection is a haunting exploration of what lies beneath the surface of our stories — and ourselves.
The Shore Issue 26 meets the blistering heat and the storms of early summer with its face turned directly into the weather. Scorched or soaked, it features electric new poems by Samuel Dickerson, Richard Siken, Natalie Padilla Young, Yishak Yohannes Yebio, Ryan Wong, Bethany Schultz Hurst, Yan Zhang, Rongfei Mu, Kathleen Winter, Carter Rekoske, S Janaki, Rebekah Rykiel, Anastasia Nikolis, Emily Pérez, Lorrie Ness, Ken Holland, Deirdre Lockwood, David Dodd Lee, Donald Pasmore, Haley Hodge, Ann Chinnis, Jenny Maaketo, Amrita Noor, Jordan Cobb, Rowan Tate, Chloe N Clark, F M Stringer, Kelle Groom, Charles Kell, Melissa Hughes, Virginia Kane, Lindsay Kellar-Madsen, William Varner & D A Angel. It also features art that screams with life and smoke and shade and brightness by Derek Ellis.
Zone 3 annual literary journal published by Austin Peay State University and their Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts is now available for readers to enjoy online, including their Editor Prize Winners as well as new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by Sara Beth Childers, Heather Hawk, Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Nicole R. Zimmerman, Amy Bagwell, Derek Jon Dickinson, Anna Abraham Gasaway, Hailey June Gross, Morgan Hamill, Callie Jennings, Quincy Gray McMichael, Mary Meriam, Dayna Patterson, Laura Ribitzky, Carson Sandell, Jon Tobias, Milagros Vilaplana, Genevieve Abravanel, Brett Biebel, Frank Reilly, and many more.
Spent, Alison Bechdel’s latest work, is subtitled “A Comic Novel,” setting it apart from her first three graphic memoirs. That said, while this work is fiction, it still draws heavily on Bechdel’s life, mainly in themes more than in events, including a main character clearly modeled on Bechdel herself. In this reality, though, she’s a pygmy goat farmer in addition to being a graphic artist and writer. As in real life, she has had a work become so successful that it’s been turned into a television show, much as Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home became a Broadway show. However, the difference here is that Bechdel has lost control of that intellectual property, so it has steadily moved away from her original vision.
One of the main themes that Bechdel explores through that change is fame and all that goes with it, especially the idea of selling out. The Bechdel of this novel has achieved a level of success, but she wonders if it’s worth it, especially when her next book offer comes from Megalopub, which is not only a large corporation, but one owned by a right-wing-supporting owner, one who goes against everything Bechdel supports. Similarly, Bechdel’s partner Holly creates online content which pushes her into a higher level of notoriety. At first, that change seems positive, as she begins to receive free equipment for their farm, but she begins to obsess over statistics and views, spending more time on metrics than on enjoying their life.
There are also subplots of relationships among their friends, which should remind readers of the community in Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, but the main focus, as the title implies, is on what and how one spends, whether that’s money or time or energy. The fictional Bechdel feels overwhelmed by the trajectory of the world, but she ends by finding a glimmer of hope in the community that might help replenish her and those around her. That’s an approach most of us could use these days.
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. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
While public dissent was unthinkable in Stalin’s Soviet Union, some citizens, inspired by civil rights movements of the 1960s and Khrushchev’s “thaw,” decided to fight for a change after his death. Historian and Professor Benjamin Nathans chronicles the roughly twenty-year history of this intelligentsia movement in To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause — titled after a common dissident toast. Relying on declassified Soviet archives and retained underground dissident literature, he relates a compelling tale of resistance in the face of state persecution.
Nathans carefully corrects dissident stereotypes from Cold War rhetoric. Though Western darlings like Sakharov and Solzenitzyn play their roles, most protagonists are not motivated by Western democratic ideals, but by promises of socialist reform in keeping with the 1936 “Stalin Constitution” and its latent — ultimately empty — guarantee of rights. They lacked the public attention of right movements in the democratic world, but the playbook for highlighting state hypocrisy was similar. Unfortunately, with no real mechanism to enact these types of reform, the state simply attacked its critics as anti-Soviet and the KGB decisively crushed the movement in the early 1980s.
While some readers might be intimidated by its 816 pages, a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction serves as an added testament to the book’s quality. In this political moment, when so much feels out of control in America and the world, these stories of quixotic, principled dissents may be just what we need to weather it.
Reviewer bio: Aiden Hunt is a writer, editor, and literary critic based in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. He is the creator, editor, and publisher of the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, and his reviews have appeared in Fugue, The Rumpus, Jacket2, and The Adroit Journal, among other venues.
Welcome to our June 27, 2025 writing prompt and submission opportunities roundup—your weekly dose of inspiration and places to share your work.
It’s the final full week of June—hard to believe the year is already half over, isn’t it? If you’re lucky enough to be getting a break from the heat vortex that’s been smothering much of the country in sweaty malaise and creative inertia, maybe now’s the time to hit the pool. Or, if it’s still too hot to think, stay inside and focus on your writing, editing, and submission goals.
This week, I was torn between which writing prompt to include in the newsletter versus our weekly roundup of submission opportunities—but in the end, I went with my gut.
Since the end of 2023, I’ve been dealing with a new gut issue: acid reflux. It’s amazing what stress (and the bad eating habits that come with it) can do to your stomach on top of some newly discovered FODMAP issues. That got me thinking…
Writing Prompt: Gut Instinct
When the world is too loud, sometimes the only voice we can trust is the one rumbling in our gut. Whether it’s intuition, indigestion, or something in between, this week we invite you to write about your gut—literally or metaphorically.
What if your gut had a voice?
What if it was a character, a symbiote, a weather vane for your emotional climate?
As Ebenezer Scrooge once said in The Muppet Christmas Carol, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.”
Sometimes our ghosts—and our stories—start in the stomach.
And in the immortal words of Little Giants: “I use these for acid indigestion.” “What are we going to use them for?” “Intimidation.”
If you know, you know. If you don’t…go watch Little Giants now.
Gut health is a serious topic, but maybe getting creative about our woes and maladies can bring some relief—if not physical, then at least mental or spiritual.
After going with your gut, keep scrolling to find a submission opportunity that speaks to it.
In the Editor’s Note for the Spring 2025 issue of Hiram Poetry Review, Willard Greenwood writes, “When the HPR first came into existence, we published poems by Charles Bukowski — see our first couple of issues. Since then, we have been on the lookout for outlaw poets and their various desperado philosophies in poetic form.”
Joining the ranks in the newest issue of Hiram Poetry Review are works by Fred Arroyo, Katie Berta, Neil Carpathios, Lynn Gilbert, Jake Hunter, Jeff McRae, Daniel Morris, J. Alan Nelson, Gloria Parker, Robert L. Penick, Joseph Powell, Beth Brown Preston, Gabriel Ricard, Claire Scott, JR Solonche, Jeff Tigchelaar, and many others.
New England Review 46.2 features stirring prose by Kirk Wilson, Nur Turkmani, and Rebecca Chace; luminous poetry by Bridget Lowe, Inkyoo Lee, and Jon Pineda; the special folio “The Sharpened Will of Us All”: Contemporary Salvadoran Writing in Translation, guest edited by Alexandra Lytton Regalado; and much more. Cover art: Homogenized, 60×36 inches, acrylic and multimedia on canvas, by Josué Rojas.
Additionally, in the Editor’s Note, Carolyn Kuebler contemplates with readers on the shifting threats we are negotiating daily and the role of literature in the fray: “Authoritarianism has always been antithetical to literature, which questions what we’re told and how to think. Even when it’s being ignored, literature works as a tool for freedom: freedom to create, reflect, observe, tell the truth, and imagine; freedom from ‘the tyranny of the present.’ But when the margins no longer offer cover, when you’re no longer invisible but vulnerable at the center, then what? Like in dodgeball, is it preferable to concede? To dodge and continue to play by the rules, or walk away from the game entirely? Maybe the metaphor ends here, because when it comes to writing, publishing, and the work of NER, we plan to stay in the game as long as possible.”
Astray. Adverb. Meaning to be away from the correct path or direction, much like being lost.
In our latest newsletter, It’s Looking Like a Lit Wave, we shared literary updates, submission opportunities, book reviews, and new releases to help you stay creatively inspired through the summer heat. One standout feature this week is our inspiration prompt, which invites writers to explore the emotional and creative terrain of being “still astray.”
🌡️ Why This Prompt?
Inspired by the haunting refrain from Stray Kids’ song “Lonely St.”, this prompt taps into the feeling of being unmoored—creatively, emotionally, or existentially. In the thick of a heatwave or a creative dry spell, it’s easy to feel directionless. But what if being “astray” isn’t a failure, but a form of freedom?
Sometimes, others only show support once you’ve nearly arrived at your destination or finally “made it.” But what if you’re still in the in-between? Do you welcome that support—or stand firm in your journey, even if it’s unfinished?
✨ Prompt: Still Astray
Write from the perspective of being “still astray.”
What does it mean to be lost in a world that demands direction?
Is being astray a failure—or a kind of freedom?
What do we discover when we stop trying to arrive?
Whether you’re working on poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction, let this be your invitation to explore the beauty and tension of the in-between.
🎧 Bonus inspiration: Watch the “Lonely St.” music video by Stray Kids — a visual and lyrical journey through solitude, resilience, and self-direction.
If the idea of being astray doesn’t resonate with you, what does the music video inspire? What story do you see playing out? (Closed caption English subtitles are available if you want to follow the lyrics.) Or maybe this is your chance to learn more about this internationally composed Korean band.
📬 Want more prompts like this? Subscribe to the NewPages Newsletter to get weekly writing inspiration, submission calls, literary news, and indie publishing highlights—delivered straight to your inbox. 👉 Subscribe here and never miss a lit wave!
The Cobbler’s Crusaders by Rick Steigelman Author Published, May 2025
Jacquelyn Pajot, a nine-year-old American visiting her sanctimonious grandmother in Paris, falls in with a pair of young French girls whose carefree grasp of ‘right and wrong’ has the wide-eyed American narrowly averting prison, purgatory and, most perilously, her grandmother’s righteous indignation.
“A charmingly whimsical, whip-smart slice of Parisian life wrapped in equal parts heart and humor…Rick Steigelman’s prose is wry, warm, and beautifully descriptive, capturing the magic of Montmartre through the curious, wide eyes of young Jacquelyn Pajot.” — Alex Norton, Likely Story
“Dialogue sparkles with life, especially as Jacquelyn navigates the humorous pitfalls of being an American tween in a French-speaking world.” — Swapna Peri, Book Reviews Cafe
“Beneath all the comedic mishaps, there’s a beautiful sense of intergenerational connection. The dynamic between Jacquelyn and her grandmother, Catherine, is particularly touching as it anchors the story in emotional truth while allowing the young cast to explore their own emerging identities and moral boundaries. I’d easily recommend it to readers who enjoy novels like A Man Called Ove or The Elegance of the Hedgehog, stories that offer laughter, but also invite you to pause and feel something deeper.” — Heena Pardeshi, The Reading Bud
Arcana: The Lost Heirs by Author/Illustrator Sam Prentice-Jones Feiwel & Friends, June 2024
Debut author/illustrator Sam Prentice-Jones explores fighting against destiny and reconciling the actions of ancestors in Arcana: The Lost Heirs, a tarot-inspired fantasy YA graphic novel.
James, Daphne, Koko, and Sonny have all grown up surrounded by magic in the Arcana, an organization of witches that protects the magical world, run by the mysterious and secretive Majors. Eli Jones, however, hadn’t even known other witches existed, until he stumbled into James. As James introduces him to the world of the Arcana, Eli finds the family he never had and a blossoming romance with James.
The five new friends soon realize that sinister influences are afoot, and everything may not be what it seems at the Arcana. When the group delves deeper into the mystery surrounding the deaths of their parents and the Majors’ rise to power, they discover that they’re at the center of a curse — one they’ve just unwittingly set into motion. As the friends search for answers, they’ll have to confront the cursed legacy that links them in hopes of freeing their futures.
“Careful/Care-full Collaboration,” the May 2025 issue of About Place Journal, is now available for readers to enjoy open-access online in addition to the publication’s full archive.
“Creative collaboration,” write the editors, “is an opportunity to summon and practice ways of being in the world that honor multiplicity, reciprocity, reflection, and, foremost, care. Challenging myths of exceptional individualism as constructed within colonial and capitalist contexts, collaboration arises as a method of and commitment to seeding and nurturing webs of knowledge, histories, practices, and relationships with each other and the places that are sacred to us. Guided by these understandings, the most recent issue of About Place Journal contemplates what it means to entangle in co-creative practices and processes that are both careful and full of care.”
About Place is a literary journal published by the Black Earth Institute, dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society.
