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!
Registration Open Now Writers take all sorts of classes on craft: character building, plotting, thematic elements, etc. BUT what you need to know beyond that is THE INDUSTRY. If you want to see your book on the bookstore shelves, you have to be a student of the business of publishing.
Whether you’re just getting started or you have a completed draft, knowing how to pitch and present your novel is imperative! Your query and first 10 pages are your foot in the publishing door.
Thinking you don’t need that yet because you’re still writing the novel? You know the adage, “Dress for the job you want?” You should be writing for the place on the bookshelf you want.
Start figuring that out for sure now and it will make everything you do in the future easier. So, yeah, this workshop IS for you—whatever stage your novel is in!
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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 upcoming fall releases.
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Agrippina the Younger follows one woman’s study of another, separated by thousands of miles and two millennia but bound by a shared sense of powerlessness. Agrippina was a daughter in a golden political family, destined for greatness — but she hungered for more power than women were allowed. Exhausted by the misogyny of the present, Diana Arterian reaches into the past to try to understand the patriarchal systems of today. In lyric verse and prose poems, she traces Agrippina’s rise, interrogating a life studded with intrigue, sex, murder, and manipulation. Arterian eagerly pursues Agrippina through texts, ruins, and films, exhuming the hidden details of the ancient noblewoman’s life. These poems consider the valences of patriarchy, power, and the archive to try to answer the question: How do we recover a woman erased by history?
Whether you’re stepping away from your desk for one last summer hurrah or leaning into the cooler weather with a fresh burst of creative energy (indoors or out—laptops travel well!), NewPages has you covered with this week’s submission opportunities for August 15, 2025 (featuring ways to share your work)—plus a creative writing prompt to help spark new ideas if you’re feeling stuck.
📅 Heads up: It’s the 15th, which means some deadlines close today. Don’t miss your chance to submit!
📬 ICYMI: Our August eLitPak went out Wednesday to newsletter subscribers, packed with even more submission calls, fall book releases, and upcoming events for readers and writers alike.
This week’s prompt, Don’t Stop the Music, was inspired by the Japanese drama Glass Heart and the magic of collaboration. Whether you’re imagining your own fictional band or turning your words into lyrics, let the music move your creativity.
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 32nd issue (Summer 2025) features poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from contributors around the globe. Accomplished, well-established authors are published — side by side — with fresh, emerging voices. Readers are provided with a powerful, focused literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. Always free to access, and always free from advertising, discover what over 160,000 readers in 150 countries, and over 1,100 contributors from 57 countries, already know; the finest new writing can be found where the desert meets the mountains.
While the colloquial phrase to turn over a new leaf essentially means to seek out a fresh start, something new, for The Turning Leaf Journal, “change” is both a theme for the journal’s content as well as a publishing philosophy.
Offering two, open access issues each year (June, December), The Turning Leaf Journal publishes creative nonfiction, poetry, hybrid works, and art “that explore the turning over of a new leaf through life’s entrances, exits, seasons, formation, and destruction. This journal is a space to explore the uncomfortable, the things most usually run away from.”
“Change is the prompt for all of the work submitted to us,” says Editor-in-Chief Megan Eralie-Henriques, “but it is also the reason we started The Turning Leaf. As an undergrad, I felt disenchanted by the idea of publishing because of all the secrecy I saw. There was so much I didn’t understand, and I felt like no one was willing to talk about what it was really like to get involved with a journal. I wanted to know how competitive a journal is – show me the numbers! Tell me what a 3% acceptance rate really means. Were there a thousand submissions, or fifty? Transparency is something we really value at TTLJ and strive to always practice because we think you deserve to know. In my early attempts to publish my own work it would have completely altered my confidence to know just how many submissions my work was competing against.”
Last weekend was full of joyful detours—chores and housecleaning gave way to a quick trip to the farmer’s market that somehow turned into a few hours at the Dinosaur Gardens. Perfect fodder for a writing and inspiration prompt, don’t you think?
Those unexpected turns have a way of lingering, their joy carrying over into the week. And now here we are—today is a dreary Tuesday evening, but sometimes dreariness is a blessing, especially when it comes with much-needed rain. Maybe it will revive the struggling vegetables in the garden.
If you’ve been in a rough submissions patch, our latest newsletter featured 80+ opportunities, plus new lit mag issues and book reviews. And if you’ve been in a dry patch creatively, let this be your metaphorical rain to quench those budding ideas.
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✍️ Inspiration Prompt: The Joyful Detour
Not everyone maps out their life or schedules every moment, but most of us make To Do lists—those small intentions to get things done. Even with the best of intentions, life often gets in the way.
It’s easy to focus on what didn’t get done—but what if we looked at the upside instead?
Maybe your weekend of chores was interrupted by an unexpected bounty of fresh produce that needed preserving. Or a quick trip to the farmer’s market turned into a spontaneous dinosaur dig and rock-hunting adventure. Or perhaps a friend you haven’t heard from in years calls you out of the blue, interrupting your writing time.
These welcome interruptions might derail your plans, but the joy and memories they bring often make the delay worthwhile—don’t they?
Your turn: Dig into your memory. Write a poem, essay, or story—or create a collage, comic, or artwork—that captures a moment when your best intentions were lovingly overruled by something unexpected, something you didn’t know you needed.
What did the unexpected moment teach you? Did it shift your priorities for only a day, or did it affect long-term change in your life?
📬 Love prompts like this?
This is just one of the original inspiration prompts we share in our weekly newsletter—alongside submission opportunities, literary news, and more.
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“I never knew if I was trying to win my mother’s heart or God’s when I wrote poems,” says Li-Young Lee in his new chapbook, I Ask My Mother to Sing. Both figures feature prominently in the slim volume that collects mother-themed poems from each of Lee’s six collections since 1986, along with seven new poems. It’s the latest in a series of “new and collected” chapbooks from notable late-career poets, including Rae Armantrout’s climate change poems and Yusef Komunyakaa’s love poems.
The book’s title poem alludes to Lee’s mother and grandmother wistfully singing songs about the old China from which they were exiled following the Communist revolution. A rocky childhood in Indonesia and other countries hostile to ethnic Chinese on his way to the U.S. colors both Lee’s poems and his close maternal feelings. Not many people, after all, can credibly say that their mother carried them “across two seas and four borders, / fleeing death by principalities and powers,” as he writes in “The Blessed Knot.”
This collection is well-timed following Lee’s 2024 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement and last year’s well-received The Invention of the Darling (W. W. Norton). Whether readers are new to these poems or already familiar with Lee’s work, they can get a great feel for a classic poet at a reasonable price. As both a reader and the editor of a chapbook-focused magazine, I hope Wesleyan University Press keeps these gems coming.
Reviewer bio: Aiden Hunt is a writer, editor, and literary critic based in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. He is the creator and editor of the Philly Chapbook Review, and his critical work has appeared in Fugue, The Rumpus, Jacket2, and The Adroit Journal, among other venues.
The Summer 2025 issue of The Baltimore Review features the winners of their summer contest selected by final judge Pamela Painter: “It’s Not the End of the World, but I Can See It from Here,” prose poetry by Corey Zeller; “Tornado Family,” flash creative nonfiction by M.S. Reagan; and “Back Together Again,” flash fiction by D.E. Hardy. Filling out the rest of the issue that readers can access online include Stefan Balan, Adriana Beltran, Kate Broad, Tom Busillo, Dolapo Demuren, Sam Flaster, David Hansen, D.E. Hardy, Andrea Figueroa-Irizarry, Michael T. Lawson, M.S. Reagan, Fay Sachpatzidis, Tim Stobierski, Maureen Tai, Cammy Thomas, Julie Marie Wade, Carson Wolfe, and Corey Zeller.
Readers can also check out past issues online back to the Winter 2012. Before that — starting with Vol. I, No. 1, Winter 1997 — The Baltimore Review was print only and continues to publish an annual print compilation every summer.
In DEED, torrin a. greathouse delves into the origins of word and action, crafting a vibrant “queer lexicon” that reflects new possibilities for engaging with trans life and sexuality. This collection, while acknowledging themes of betrayal, consciously steps away from a trauma-centric narrative. The poems are infused with a sense of liberation, free from the “stigma” often associated with discussions of trans desire and chronic illness. Although they carry a history of violence and oppression intertwined with desire and choice, the poems embrace a refreshing, unapologetic exploration of intimacy without guilt.
One of the most striking aspects of this collection is the way words transition from meaning something to doing something, combining etymological “miracle” and mythological “metaphor.” A “verb can carry many meanings.” Take “swallow”: to resist expressing; to believe unquestioningly; to cause to disappear; the muscular movement of the esophagus. This range of definitions offers greathouse the possibilities of “What language is there for survival.”
The poet’s style exhibits remarkable control, perhaps a response to the intense subject matter, which includes themes of transition, sex work, and the complexities of dominant-submissive relationships. Notably, greathouse employs poetic forms such as the “burning haibun” and “cleave tanka.” Each embodies a sense of duality, wherein two expressions cleaved together or apart create a dynamic interplay of ideas. This structural doubleness echoes the content, “born / from the severance of” — transitioning from victimization to empowerment through sexuality. In these chimeric forms, greathouse creates transformations of context and meaning.
At times, greathouse invites patience from the reader with phrases like “Bear with me,” hinting at the demanding nature of her subject matter while simultaneously encouraging an engagement with the profound exploration of identity and desire within the poetry. In “trusting the broken / / machine of my desire,” torrin A. greathouse is held by words and creates new “cognates” for belonging.
DEED by torrin a. greathouse. Wesleyan University Press, August 2024.
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.
If one were to look in the acknowledgements at the end of The Book of Records, Madeleine Thien’s new novel, it would appear as if she has written traditional historical fiction, given the number of books and authors she references. However, her novel is more complex than that. There’s one main plotline that involves Lina, who has run away from Foshan, China, it seems, with her father. They now live beside the Sea, though what sea that is varies based on who one asks. They almost seem to be in a temporary refugee resettlement camp, as many people stay there for brief periods of time, then leave on ships. Lina and her father, Wui Shin, stay there for years, though, as her father is sick.
When they fled — the reader finds out why in the middle section of the book, which flashes back to Wui Shin’s younger days — Lina’s father took three books from a series of books on explorers; Lina even complains that they were not her favorite three, which is why they were less worn than the others. The three explorers are Du Fu, Baruch Spinoza, and Hannah Arendt, as the series authors included those who explored mentally as well as geographically.
Lina and her father’s room in a building seems to be outside of time in some way — the connection between time and space is a recurring theme in the novel — and their room connects to a room where three people live: Jupiter, Bento, and Blucher. When they find out about the three books Lina has read and reread, they point out how much the books have omitted, and each of them tell her all that’s missing from those three people’s lives, about which they seem to know much more than they should.
What ties the novel together is the theme of oppression and power, as Wui Shin and Lina are fleeing an oppressive Chinese regime, much as Du Fu, Spinoza, and Arendt all had to deal with people in power who tried to repress their thinking, as well as physically oppressing or killing those who disagreed with them. Thien has crafted a work of historical fiction that connects several characters who try to survive, recording their lives and struggles, so that those who live in a time where there are still those who try to suppress ideas and oppress people can find connection and hope.
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.
The August 2025 issue of The Lake, online journal of poetry and poetics, is now fresh and features works by Dolo Diaz, Mike Dillon, Syvia Freeman, Norton Hodges, Shirin Jabalameli, Tom Kelly, Marion McCready, Maren O. Mitchell, Donna Pucciani, Fiona Sinclair, and Susan Stiles. Readers will also enjoy poetry book reviews of Donald S Murray’s Tales of a Cosmic Crofter, Victoria Gatehouse’s The Hawthorn Bride, Vicki Feaver’s, The Yellow Kite, and Julia Kolchinsky’s Parallax. ‘One Poem Reviews’ offer a sample of poetry from recently published collections. August shares works from Indran Amirthanayagam, Diane Elayne Dees, Robin Houghton, Brenda Kay Ledford, Beate Sigriddaughter, and J. R. Solonche.
Sadly, the rain seems to be avoiding my area like the plague, and my vegetable garden could really use some TLC to help its struggling plants along. If your area is also bracing for yet another awful heat wave, NewPages has plenty to keep you cool and help you meet your submission goals. Take a break, watch a movie, go to the beach, get recharged to write, edit, submit, and repeat!
🎤 This Week’s Inspiration: K-pop Demon Hunters
I’m late to the trend, but thanks to its explosive popularity, I finally caved and watched K-pop Demon Hunters on Netflix—even my non-K-pop-loving family members loved it! Now its characters, plot, and of course music are living rent-free in my head. And while it’s an animated movie, it’s packed with deep themes—perfect for nudging your creative juices.
Instead of one singular prompt, here are three creative prompts inspired by this trending film. Whether you write fiction, poetry, nonfiction, scripts, or songs—or work in visual mediums like graphic narratives, collage, or mixed media—these themes are ripe for exploration:
Jill Hoffman’s Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves features a candid and unfiltered poetics that demystifies the fame surrounding poets and writers. This reflects her long-standing involvement as a poet and editor of Mudfish magazine and Box Turtle Press in New York City. Hoffman’s poems read like “a story streamed forth / like a show on Netflix, seasons of episodes / that hook you into long nights of binge- / watching.” Hoffman’s poetry is confessional in the truest sense, free of pretension and deeply human.
Her poems sometimes take the form of aubades, sonnets, ekphrasis, villanelles, or fairy tales, but they are most often written as epistles, inviting readers to become confidants. Hoffman’s writing is reminiscent of the New York School poets and includes name-drops of figures like John Ashbery, one of the most renowned among them. Her style is vivid, urban, and unafraid, weaving together themes of medical concerns, old age, and death, with relationship desires and editorial responsibilities, featuring kimonos, “clogged toilets,” a “tree wearing mermaid earrings,” and a dog named Vermeer, along with plenty of anecdotes about dog walking and dinner parties.
Through her everything-out-in-the-open poems, readers gain insight into Hoffman as a writer confronting her own biases regarding her “privileged heart” while simultaneously addressing her Jewish heritage. She also reveals her experiences as a mother estranged from her daughter, who she feels has “betrayed” her. Beneath the lively and playful nature of these poems lies the deep pain of their fractured relationship.
As she weighs her life “on the scales,” Hoffman’s humanity shines through her imperfect responses, faux pas, and awkward moments. By sharing her “old funny life / Of heartbreak / And ecstasy” in this sincere manner, she helps dismantle the taboos surrounding artistic, diasporic, and societal expectations, offering a book “to make a reader fall in love.”
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.
Moonday Mag is home to speculative writing, including horror, fantasy, scifi, magical realism, anything that spawns from the “what if” of a creator’s mind. Publishing quarterly online and in print, Moonday Mag was started by Editor-in-Chief Caridad Cole who sought to “bridge a gap” she experienced when seeking to publish her own work. “Moonday Mag will give speculative writers a more traditional platform for their work, and in turn, give them the confidence to pursue even bigger goals. I wanted to create a magazine that I myself would strive to be published in, a place that publishes work that makes me think, Wow I wish I had written that!“
The name for Moonday Mag, Cole explains, “comes from an old teenagehood blog, which was named for a combination of Monday (the day of the week I was born, and the subject of my favorite nursery rhyme, “Monday’s Child”) and the moon (an obsession for as long as I can remember). The first poem I ever wrote was called “Starstruck by the Power of the Moon,” and I have no idea why. Maybe I’m from there.”
Happy Tuesday! This week in our newsletter, we tried something new—giving you a sneak peek at what’s coming to our Magazine Stand. Hopefully, you enjoyed that first look at the upcoming lit mag issues. If you missed Monday’s newsletter, you can catch up here.
If you love independent bookstores and maps, we are also working behind the scenes on trying to bring an interactive map to life. Baby steps…wobbly and uncertain, but we’re trying.
Speaking of uncertainty, we actually brought you a writing prompt devoted to turning uncertainty in love into certainty with the idea that you know you will fall in love with a certain person in the future.
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Inspiration Prompt: A Premonition of Love
We’ve all seen it—books, movies, songs—where love strikes like lightning. Two strangers lock eyes across a crowded room, and just like that, they’re swept into a whirlwind romance. It’s the classic “love at first sight” trope.
But what if we turned that idea on its head?
In Japanese culture, there’s a beautiful phrase: koi no yokan—a premonition of love. It’s not the instant spark of passion, but rather a quiet certainty that love will bloom in time. A subtle knowing. A gentle inevitability.
It’s the moment before the moment. A glance that lingers. A silence that feels full. A feeling that says, “I’ll love you—just not yet.”
Is this love destiny? A soul recognizing its match? Or is it our mind projecting hope onto a stranger, crafting a story before it’s even begun?
You be the judge.
This week’s prompt invites you to explore the concept of koi no yokan in your own creative way. You can:
📝 Write a poem, story, or essay 🎨 Create a piece of visual art or collage 🎭 Capture the feeling of love’s quiet arrival in any medium you choose
Think of something along the lines of e.e. cummings’“somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond” or Julio Cortázar’s“The Night Face Up.” Maybe write a story that ends with the line: “I knew I’d love them, just not yet.”
Or illustrate the moment before love begins—a gesture, a shared silence, a fleeting glance. What does that premonition feel like visually?
(And yes, if you now have Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” stuck in your head—“I’ve got a premonition, that girl’s gonna make me fall…”—you’re welcome.)
💌 Want more prompts like this? This one was originally featured in our newsletter—where inspiration meets inbox. Subscribe now to get weekly creative sparks, book reviews, and community highlights delivered straight to you.
In Stronger, Michael Joseph Gross gives a historical overview of the importance of muscle throughout one’s life by centering on three different people and areas. Gross’s background as an investigative reporter shows as he divides the book into three sections: one that focuses on Charles Stocking, a professor of classics and kinesiology, and draws on how the Greeks and Romans viewed strength; a second with Jan Todd as the core, showing how women’s strength developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the final portion building on Maria Fiatarone Singh’s research on strength in older adults.
Throughout the book, Gross uses a wide range of resources, as his acknowledgements and notes sections make clear, to make the argument that strength training, especially through heavy lifting, benefits people in all areas of health, no matter their background, age, gender, or any other identifying aspect. The experts he refers to point out how medicine and politics have overlooked the importance of building strength, focusing on pills and policies that are less effective.
Strength isn’t a how-to manual, but a work that should serve as an inspiration to begin the journey of building strength, whatever that looks like at any stage of life, drawing on stories from Stocking, Todd, and Singh to show how everyone can benefit from incorporating strength training into their lives. The research that surrounds the information from Stocking, Todd, and Singh’s reinforces the work they have done to make a compelling argument that building strength can help us all live longer and healthier lives.
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.
Publishing online and in print since 2020, Superpresent‘s Summer 2025 issue is now available. This free quarterly magazine of arts and literature presents striking visual art and writing equally, always free to download or view online with print copies sold at cost of production plus postage.
This newest issue feature prose by Zach Murphy , Rituparna Mukerjee, Brittany A. Silveira, Andrew Wickham, Renée LoBue, Richard Abramson, Anna-Grace Tracy, Arjun Razdan, Ben Guterson, Devin Murphy, Dominic Pillai, Dorit d’Scarlett, Makhosini Mpofu, Katya Cengel; poetry by Duncan Forbes, Spider Dailey, Abi Tabor, Carole Greenfield, Edilson Ferreira, Effie Spence, Miriam Sagan, Rita Moe, Brittany A. Silveira, CJ Giroux, Flossie Hedges, Carolina Hospital, Kate Price, Kelsey Britton, Larry Kilman; art by -1, Alyona Fedorchenko, Aleksandra Sceptanovic, Sheridan Hines, Alex Charey, Oleksandra Viazinko, Anastasiia Teslenko, Cyril Oluwamuyiwa Emmanuel, Clara Hoag, Kamila Jantos, joni brown, Oksana Kami, Natali Agryzkova, Isomidddin Eshonkulov, Maria Faust, Shahriar Medi, Grzegorz Wroblewski, Ernest Compta Llinas, Julia Forrest, Anton Konovalenko, Leemour Pelli, Li Bilestka, Brent Galen Adkins, Maksym Romenskyi, Dănuț-Adrian-Iași Chidon-Frunză, Antonio Muñiz , Barak Rotem, Mariia Horshkova, Madeline Hernandez, Tyler Alpern, Mary Jane; video and sound Héctor Almeda, Jourden Fenner, Chalotte Leamon, Roxana Halina.
Poet, essayist, and activist Margaret Randall’s latest book, More Letters from the Edge, follows the April 2025 release of Letters From the Edge, a series of chronologically-organized excerpts from written exchanges between the noted author and five intellectuals and artists on the political left. In More Letters, Randall continues this pattern. This time, however, she zeroes in on her communications with poet-writer-teacher Arturo Arango; former member of the Weather Underground Kathy Boudin (1943-2022); graphic artist and painter Jane Norling; and retired museum curator Robert Schweitzer. The emails and letters that Randall includes are fascinating, allowing readers to glimpse the ways these progressive activists have blurred the artificially constructed line that typically separates personal life from political struggles.
In fact, although most of the missives center on politics and social concerns – the struggle to earn enough to pay the bills; growing censorship and repression in Cuba, and the deleterious impact of the long-standing US blockade of the island; the ethical, racial and gender dynamics surrounding U.S. museum exhibitions; and whether violence can ever be justified in pursuit of social betterment – this is a moving celebration of friendship. Indeed, the connections between Randall and the people she corresponds with reveal deep bonds that have flourished despite periodic set-backs and obstacles.
It’s an intriguing showcase for relationships that are based on shared, and sometimes evolving, values. Randall calls her friends outriders and says that all four serve as ”bridges between cultures, between languages, between ideas. They bring people together and strengthen communities.”
The same can be said of Randall. More Letters models what it means to live an engaged life and maintain a steadfast commitment to peace and progressive social justice while simultaneously pursuing personal fulfillment. It’s an inspiring, revelatory book.
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 basic premise of Lucas Schaefer’s debut novel, The Slip, is simple: Nathaniel Rothstein went missing in the summer of 1998, and he’s still missing more than a decade later. However, it takes almost five hundred pages to explore the characters who are closely related to that disappearance — his uncle, Bob Alexander; his supervisor/mentor, David Dalice; and Sasha, his 1-900 Russian girlfriend, of sorts — and those who seem to circle loosely around what happened — Miriam Lopez, a police officer who wasn’t even on the force in the 1990s; Alexis Cepeda, an up-and-coming boxer; and Ed Hooley, a troubled, middle-aged man who appeared at the boxing gym around which all the characters circle (Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym) out of nowhere.
“The slip” is a move in boxing where one dodges a punch by seeming to move one’s head, but actually creates the move through an adjustment of the legs. The first half of the novel tends to focus on the fact that nobody in the novel is exactly who they say they are, some because they don’t yet know who they are, especially the younger characters; some because they don’t want others to know who they really are; and some because they can’t seem to stop being somebody they’re not. As Schaefer moves later in the novel, though, he begins raising larger questions around race, immigration, and policing, all of which connect to the first half because there are also characters who are unable or unwilling to see others as they truly are.
In some cases, characters grow into their new selves, such as one character who transitions from male to nonbinary to female, ultimately becoming comfortable being who she’s always wanted to be. Others, though, put on a face to match the world’s expectations of who they should be, and that face ultimately becomes their face, even when such a change causes them to lose part of the goodness of who they once were.
Ultimately, the novel explores the question of how one defines themselves, for both good and ill. Like many American novels, it’s concerned with identity, as the relatively young country still is. It shows an Austin, Texas, that is changing in ways that it might not like, just as the U.S. has changed in the twentieth century in ways that lead to citizens not seeing each other as they are. Schaefer has written a substantial novel that’s asking important questions at a time when those questions need better answers.
The Slip by Lucas Schaefer. Simon & Schuster, June 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.
In a city that celebrates life in the face of death, New Orleans’s bohemian past is honored with Sue Strachan’s The Obituary Cocktail. This drink, made with gin, vermouth, and absinthe, was a staple of mid-20th-century café society before it faded into obscurity. This book, much like a good obituary, recounts the drink’s history from its 1940s origins at Café Lafitte, a hub for New Orleans’s vibrant café society. Author Sue Strachan explores the ingredients, offers recipes, and resurrects tales of other morbidly named cocktails. By including detours into secret societies and parades, The Obituary Cocktail gives this unique beverage new life.
Happy August! With the start of a new month comes fresh submission opportunities and approaching deadlines. NewPages is here to help you keep your writing and submission goals going strong with our weekly roundup of submissions and a fresh writing prompt to help get your creative energy flowing again.
The narrator of Ocean Vuong’s second novel, Hai, is a second-generation Vietnamese immigrant whose life isn’t following the traditional stereotype. Though he was the first in his family to attend college, he dropped out and returned home to New Gladness, Connecticut, a fictional town with struggles that mirror so many cities that once were centers of industry. He tells his mother he’s been accepted to medical school in Boston, but he actually intends to jump from a bridge. An eighty-something-year-old woman in the house next to the river, Grazina, a Lithuanian immigrant, stops him from jumping, and he becomes her caretaker as she descends into dementia.
The core of the novel is Hai’s job at HomeMarket, a restaurant clearly modeled on Boston Market, where he forms meaningful relationships with BJ, Maureen, Wayne, Russia, and Sony (his cousin). Each person has struggles and dreams, wanting to move on from the low-wage job, and they each support one another as best they can. That’s especially true with Hai and Sony, given their family relationship, as Sony’s mother is in prison, and Sony is living in a group home, as he has been diagnosed with autism and is unable to live on his own.
While Hai helps others with their problems, he is unable to manage his drug addiction. He has recently come out of three weeks at a rehab facility, but he has begun using again, largely drawing from the drugs Grazina’s husband had around the house before he died. The shadow of the Vietnam war hangs over the novel, as Sony believes his father was a soldier in the war, but Sony is obsessed with the Civil War, even favoring the Southern side, given that he and Hai are from the Southern part of Vietnam, ignoring the racism that motivated the South. The novel is also set in the financial crisis of 2008, reinforcing the decline of New Gladness, and leading to Hai’s lack of employment options in the town.
Vuong wants his readers to see those people who survive on low-wage jobs that literature often overlooks and the ways in which they help each other do so. Rather than competing with one another for hours, when a regional manager wants BJ to fire one of the crew, they try to volunteer to give up some shifts for each other. Though each of them have concerns of their own, they create a type of family in a place most readers wouldn’t expect to find one.
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.
Raw Deal: The Indians of the Midwest and the Theft of Native Lands by Robert Downes The Wandering Press, January 2024
In Raw Deal: The Indians of the Midwest and the Theft of Native Lands, Robert Downes offers a highly-readable dive into the history of the Native peoples of the Midwest and their 500-year struggle to defend their homeland. Raw Deal explores the theft of Native lands in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, tracing how Indigenous peoples were dispossessed by squatters, speculators, and fraudulent treaties, which offered pennies per acre and were enforced by the threat of violence. Downes chronicles the heroic efforts of Native peoples to retain their homelands through centuries of warfare and exploitation, from the earliest inhabitants to their confrontation with a flood of European immigrants.
Bob Downes of The Wandering Press is author of eight books, most of which have a Northern Michigan connection. His best-selling Biking Northern Michigan guidebook offers cycling routes throughout Leelanau County and beyond, while his historical novels, Windigo Moon and The Wolf and The Willow celebrate the culture of the prehistoric Anishinaabek.
What if literature wasn’t just a collection of books, but an entire universe?
Welcome to Litfinity—the boundless, ever-expanding cosmos of storytelling, where every genre is a planet, every poem a star, and every narrative a force that fuels the galaxy. This is the kind of imaginative spark you’ll find in the latest issue of the NewPages newsletter—alongside fresh literary magazine issues, submission opportunities, book reviews, and indie bookstore news.
✍️ This Week’s Inspiration Prompt: To Litfinity & Beyond!
(Picture Buzz Lightyear, book in hand, shouting this new catchphrase as he rockets into the literary unknown.)
In this prompt, you’re a Litronaut, tasked with restoring balance to the universe after the mysterious darkening of the Library Nebula—the heart of Litfinity. Your journey will take you across genre-planets like:
Melancholia – a world powered by poetry and emotion
Chronotex – a tech-charged sci-fi realm pulsing with innovation
Mythara – floating isles woven from fantasy and myth
But what caused the nebula to go dark? Is there a villain lurking in the shadows of forgotten stories? Could you uncover a lost genre—one that reshapes the very fabric of Litfinity?
Optional twist: Include excerpts from fictional books or poems you discover along the way. Bonus points if you invent a new genre-planet entirely!
🎨 Art Prompt: The Library Nebula
For the visually inclined, this week’s art prompt invites you to illustrate the Library Nebula—a swirling galaxy of books, scrolls, and glowing ink. Imagine a ship powered by metaphors and similes, navigating constellations shaped like punctuation marks. Think:
Vellum clouds
Ink-splatter stars
Parchment rings
Genre-themed color palettes
Or take it further and illustrate one of the genre-planets. What does Chronotex look like? How does Mythara shimmer with fantasy magic?
Subscribe to the NewPages newsletter to get a fresh prompt delivered to your inbox every week—along with the latest in the literary world. Whether you’re a writer, artist, or reader, there’s a place for you in Litfinity.
👉 Subscribe now and let your imagination go to Litfinity—and beyond!
In The Utopians, Grace Nissan provides a tangible exploration of an artist’s fascination with Thomas More (1478–1535) and his fictional work, Utopia, published in 1516. Nissan’s book resonates with and responds to More’s in three distinct ways. Nissan’s text is assembled from the language “parts available” in More’s. The Utopians features a series of “Dear More” letters and includes a serial poem entitled “The World,” which underscores the tensions between origins and change. “The first world was a world, the second invention. The first world was a world, the second critique.” To survive, Nissan’s “second world had to cannibalize” More’s “first world.”
While Thomas More’s narrative primarily depicts the religious, social, and political customs of a fictional island, Nissan’s narrative addresses the current socio-political upheaval “in terms of money.” It highlights the devastating consequences of capitalism’s “territorial lust and imperial phantoms,” and the chaos caused by the relentless pursuit of “private property” and the “production of luxury.” These situations reflect the indifference of the wealthy toward the “miracles” achieved by those who contribute their labor to “mend roads / clean out ditches / repair bridges.”
As The Utopians is also a formal exploration of artistic “invention” and “critique,” it emphasizes the need to confront “prison & syntax.” Throughout the collection, the refrain “I must tell you about…” is supplemented by: “the Utopians,” “the towns,” their “debates,” “wars,” “scribes,” “language,” and “death.” This leads to a “Semantic satiation of the world.”
Being “starved of meaning” and “losing meaning through repetition” results in a world “grim & desolate.” The critique appears to have succeeded only in a reshuffling that “rebuilt the things it abolished, in negation.” “History” comes back. Nissan’s lyric elegiac poetry, reflecting social transformation and political upheaval, reads like an “epitaph.” After all, “aren’t all human beings / sort of war damage”?
The Utopians by Grace Nissan. Ugly Duckling Presse, May 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.
The Meadow is a free, annual print and online journal of Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, publishing works from new and established writers and artists and one of the few literary journals in the country publishing students alongside well-known authors. Submissions are open every year from August 15 thru January 15. This newest issue features nonfiction by Trinity Smith and Landa wo, fiction by Billy Thompson, Kendall Klym, S. Frederic Liss, David W. Berner, and Laura Lambie, and poetry by Robert Wrigley, Jan Beatty, Ace Boggess, Dani Putney, Audrey Buccola, Melanie Diaz, Moon Grizzle, Jason D. Benjamin, Rachael A. Trotter, Brytlee Hansen, Hunter Brown, Isai Diaz, Christopher Linforth, Kimberly Ann Priest, Gabrielle Patterson, among many more contributors rounding out this reading experience. A beautifully crafted publication to savor slowly and deeply through the year or gobbled up in one sitting!
Though Meghan O’Gieblyn’s book was published in 2021, it has only become more relevant with the rise of and reliance on AI. O’Gieblyn explores how we think about this emerging technology and the effects of that thought process on our humanity and theology. She draws on a variety of philosophers, especially those from the middle part of the twentieth century who were dealing with the horrors of World War II and the role technology played in it, as well as her personal experience, as she attended a fundamentalist Bible college before leaving her faith behind.
One of the main ways O’Gieblyn thinks through technology’s role in and effects on our lives is through the metaphors we use, as we often refer to ourselves, especially our minds/brains, as machines — for example, we talk about processing information or experiences, as if our minds are CPUs or servers. Similarly, we anthropomorphize technology, a comparison that has only become more pronounced as computers, especially AI, have begun to mimic humans more convincingly — many of us use he/she pronouns to refer to our GPS, to name one example.
O’Gieblyn ties all of these comparisons to theology, as we have begun to speak of computers and AI as having predictive capabilities, as when a website suggests a book or movie we might like. Since even the creators of some algorithms and AI admit they don’t quite know how they work, they become like a god that is beyond our understanding. The problem then occurs when we make them into a sovereign god — like the Calvinist God whom humans should not question because of their omnipotence and omniscience — as we have begun trusting machines to make decisions. Thus, we lose our humanity, depending too much on something we see as beyond us.
O’Gieblyn wants to remind readers of the stakes in such an off-loading, as technology that doesn’t take our humanity into consideration (or humans who don’t realize what they’re giving up) will lead to a technology and to lives without purpose or meaning.
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.
Comet Neowise was visible in the Northern Hemisphere’s night sky during July 2020. A group of friends “camping near the water to see” the comet serves as the backdrop for Ariel Machell’s debut chapbook, In the Wake, which explores the theme of “fleetingness,” asking: “How much will we allow to pass us by?”
Predominantly composed of prose poems, the collection is an apostrophe to the Willamette River, an elegy for past intimacy, a celebration of cosmic phenomena, and introspective “thinking about what made an ending.” The poems alternate between addressing Memory as an intimate other and recounting the camping trip when the comet “erupted” into the group’s shared vision, propelling readers toward philosophical inquiry about the essence of memory and how it navigates the complexities of time and distance.
Machell’s writing is firmly rooted in the river’s landscape and the relentless nature of memory, demonstrating a rich eco-philosophical elegiac lyricism. Her poetics prioritize felt experience over narrative clarity, offering deep intimacy while purposefully omitting specifics of the betrayal. “The sadness — I refused to explain it.” This absence inspires further inquiry: Does the origin of a feeling matter, or is the emotion itself the primary focus? The lack of definitive answers is among the collection’s strengths, embracing the “indefinite” with vulnerability.
Machell captures the “idea,” “image,” and “feel of” grief without resolution, allowing each poem to stir with the potential to “wake.” A vigil, disturbed water, an emergence — the triple entendre of the collection’s title allows “Possibility to do all the heavy work.” The title allows the poet-speaker to mourn the end of a romantic relationship, navigate the disturbed water left behind memory’s boat, and to catalyze “Waking up.” Some endings are beginnings.
In the Wake by Ariel Machell. Finishing Line Press, October 2024.
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.
The Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Black Warrior Review (51.2) features the work of Artist Char Jeré with a full-color portfolio of work inside as well as on the cover. The issue also includes a dedicated portfolio of Palestinian writers with “amplified stories that challenge and inspire us, creating space for voices that refuse to be silenced.” In keeping with Black Warrior Review‘s “long tradition of pushing boundaries and championing brave new voices,” the editors write, “In putting together 51.2, we have read and written freely, unburdened by literary convention or fear of failure. We have shattered molds, challenged norms, and uplifted narratives that defy categorization. And in breaking with tradition, we have created a tradition that is entirely our own.”
Contributing to this new tradition is poetry by Angie Mazakis, Holly Zhou, Mandy Moe Pwint Tu, Ashley Warner, Hussain Ahmed, Milla van der Have, Brionne Janae, Kim Jensen, Iqra Khan, Dana Tenille Weekes, Lisa Suhair Mujaj, Rajiv Mohabir, Haya Abunasser, Sa Whitley, and Thaer Husien; prose by Amber Starks, Uyen Phuong Dang, Thalia Williamson, Nicole Chulick, Robert Randolph, Jr., Megan Walsh, Thea Lim, Mary Leauna Christensen, M. K. Thekkumkattil, Suchita Chadha; and comics and art by Emily Lewandowski and H. Roth-Brown.
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.
