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!
After a brief hiatus, the Terrain.org podcast curated by Miranda Perrone, Soundscapes, is back. Their seventh new episode is “Wildness: Life, or Death?” This 36-minute podcast features Janisse Ray reading her essay “I Have Seen the Warrior: Crossing the Okefenokee,” in which she shares her three-day experience “crossing the largest swamp east of the Mississippi.” This is enhanced by a conversation between Janisse and Miranda. The episode opens with a poem by Robert Morgan, “Portal,” and ends with a poem by Kim Parko, “Our Woman.” Terrain.org also offers a full transcript of the program with time cues.
North Country: A Pedagogical Almanac by Carolyn Dekker Black Lawrence Press, February 2023
North Country: A Pedagogical Almanac by Carolyn Dekker is a memoir-in-essays about teaching and family life in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The book follows the cycle of seasons in this remote and beautiful place by the waters of Lake Superior during the years in which the author finds a place there. It’s also a look at higher education on the razor’s edge at a tiny and struggling liberal arts college. Above all, the memoir is about a life lived alongside books and what they might teach us about how to love, parent, mentor, and care for others.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Lauren Fleshman, author of Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World and one of the top professional runners of her generation, never achieved the highest levels of success as she (at the time) and others defined it. She talks about her running career in her memoir, but her interests lay beyond training times and significant races, as she’s much more interested in why she and so many other female runners struggled to perform as well as they (and others) expected. She redefines success away from making the Olympic team to being able to run to one’s potential and still live a healthy life. While acknowledging her limited point of view and knowledge, she talks about the obstacles and struggles that come with being a female runner: unhealthy relationships with food and body image; coaches and trainers who treat females’ bodies as if they’re interchangeable with those of men; sponsors and marketers who objectify women or fail to take into account their different physical development. While she shares the clear events of misogyny and sexism, she also conveys the less-clear, more-frequent ways in which a patriarchal sport and society ignore women’s potential, hindering them from becoming the runners and people they could be.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
Music for Ghosts by Christopher Locke NYQ Books, May 2022
Christopher Locke’s new collection of poetry Music for Ghosts is a visceral testament to youth and hubris, erasure, and forgiveness. The heart of these poems straddles the space between the personal and the universally lived, where the past can shatter our best intentions at love, while the future holds us wanting at the precipice of joy. From his Pentecostal childhood to the blazing religion of punk rock, Locke caromed straight into the void of addiction, even as marriage and fatherhood hinted at something better. But in spite of loss, or maybe because of it, Locke remains steadfast in his quest to seek fearlessly and intentionally, reclaiming every light offered in hope’s name.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Boy brings readers Tracy Youngblom’s second full-length collection of poetry. The death of a youngest sibling as a child, an alcoholic and distant father, a grief-stricken family, a tentative faith: these are the building blocks of the narrative of Boy, a sequence of poems that explores how death and loss color memory and influence the ways family members relate to each other and to their shared history.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
“The Russophone Literature of Resistance” headlines the March 2023 issue of World Literature Today. The eight writers included in the cover feature all oppose the Russian Federation’s current regime, whether from inside the country or beyond its borders. Additional writers highlighted inside include Alexandra Lytton Regalado (El Salvador), Siphiwe Ndlovu (Zimbabwe), and Bridget Pitt (South Africa), along with essays on “The New Cadre of Latin American Women Writers,” a postcard tour of unique bookstores along the US–Mexico border, and three dispatches from literary Istanbul. Be sure to check out the latest must-read titles in WLT’s book review section, three recommended Indigenous horror novels, and much more!
Michal “MJ” Jones’ debut poetry collection Hood Vacations is a rhythmic & quiet rumbling – an unflinching recollection of Blackness, queerness, gender, and violence through lenses of family lineage and confessional narrative. A nostalgia for an unreachable home permeates these poems: “We were mighty beautiful once, in golden dust.” The speaker of Hood Vacations tells of magic: of praying mantises, bathtub octopuses, Black ghosts, and bringing back “rainbow soap colors.” It is a book of passing – as, through, and on. Hop on in.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
For more than thirty years, diverse groups of passionate professional and novice writers have gathered at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. While attending workshops and keynote addresses at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts, writers learn about the craft of writing, share ideas, and make new friends while networking with authors, editors and agents from myriad backgrounds. Early-bird registration pricing available through May 12th. Join us!View flyer.
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WCSU’s MFA in Creative and Professional Writing is thrilled to announce that their 2023 Housatonic Book Awards are now open. All books published in 2022 are eligible. Winners receive $1,500 and present a reading and master class at residency. See full details here and view flyer here.
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A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma by Robert J. Miller and Robbie Ethridge The University of Oklahoma Press, January 2023
“At the end of the Trail of Tears there was a promise,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the decision issued on July 9, 2020, in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma. And that promise, made in treaties between the United States and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation more than 150 years earlier, would finally be kept. With the Court’s ruling, the full extent of the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation was reaffirmed—meaning that 3.25 million acres of land in Oklahoma, including part of the city of Tulsa, were recognized once again as “Indian Country” as defined by federal law. A Promise Kept explores the circumstances and implications of McGirt v. Oklahoma, likely the most significant Indian law case in well over 100 years. Combining legal analysis and historical context, this book gives an in-depth, accessible account of how the case unfolded and what it might mean for Oklahomans, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and other tribes throughout the United States.
Since its inception in 1963, South Dakota Review has maintained a tradition of supporting work by contemporary writers writing from or about the American West. The newest issue, South Dakota Review 57.2, continues this tradition, featuring poetry by Mercedes Lawry, Jane Zwart, Jessica Goodfellow, Josh Mahler, Elizabeth Tracey, Emma Aylor, Jey Ley, Carol Everett Adams, Brooke Harries, Michelle Otero, Dianna Vega, Nathan Whiting, E.B. Schnepp, and Jonathan Louis Duckworth; short stories by Elizabeth Tracey, Emily García, Vinh Hoang, and Jarrett Kaufman; as well as essays by Sihle Ntuli, Dannielle Shorr, and Joe Sacksteder.
Deadline: March 15, 2023 The Word Works is accepting entries of original volumes of poetry by a living American or Canadian writer for their Washington Prize. Winner receives $1,500 and publication. Visit website and view flyer to learn more.
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Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.
The author of four award-winning books and a decades-long editor and book coach/marketer, John Sibley Williams can assist with everything from individual poem to manuscript critiques; regular book coaching; 1-on-1 workshops; the creation of pitch letters, press kits, and book proposals; agent/publisher research; and more. His passion is assisting poets and writers by tailoring all strategies to their individual needs. View flyer or visit website for more information.
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Reminiscent of Downtown Abbey, this mystery takes place in 1919 on an English estate owned by Sir Thomas. The fourteen-year-old narrator is Harry, the son of Sir Thomas’s groom. When Harry finds a murdered man, he decides he must help to solve the murder and that will help him become “somebody.” This coming-of-age story as well as a murder mystery offers many surprises around Harry’s life along the way.
Readers follow Harry’s adventures in trying to solve the murder while he experiences many of the societal changes of the time—motor cars vs. horses, class distinctions, and gender roles. Expectedly, Harry is gifted with horses, but it is clear the author knows horses well too. By the end of the book, I felt I knew each of the horses and their distinct personalities, making this a great read for horse lovers.
At the front of the novel, the author provides a map of the farms and estates, as well as a cast of characters. There were times when the references to locations or characters got confusing, so I found these additions helpful.
The bumps in the road Harry encounters kept me turning the pages until it was all tied up with a satisfying ending. Could there be a sequel to find out more about Harry as an adult? I hope so!
Reviewer bio: Laureen Mathon is a retired insurance professional, avid reader, and former library trustee who looks forward to having this extra time to read and pursue new projects.
Registration Deadline: Year-round Caesura Poetry Workshop aims to support, inspire, and energize poets through affordable monthly Zoom workshops hosted by award-winning poet, editor, and teacher John Sibley Williams. All workshops include poem analysis, active group discussion, and writing prompts. Upcoming class themes include nature journaling, book marketing, poetic forms, erasure, sequence poems, monthly critique workshops and writing circles, and more. View flyer and visit website for more information.
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Have you ever considered attending a writers retreat? Gain insight on your writing, deepen your craft, make new writer friends and best of all, gift yourself with a beautiful setting to hone your voice. Writing coach and author Lynne Golodner is hosting an intimate week-long writers retreat in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia from July 24-28, 2023, and there’s only ONE SPOT LEFT. For information and to apply, visit website.
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Deadline: March 31, 2023 The 17th annual National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) are open to all English language printed books available for sale, including small presses, mid-sized independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. NIEA is proud to be a champion of self-publishing and independent presses. Monetary awards, sponsorships, and entry rules are described in detail on our website.
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Deadline: March 15, 2023 The 10th Annual Permafrost Book Prize offers publication of a book length work of poetry, $1,000, and distribution through University of Alaska Press. Final judge: Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $20. For complete guidelines, please visit our website. View full flyer.
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No reading fee! 22nd year. Submit one humor poem to Winning Writers’ 2023 contest to win $2,000 and online publication. Accepts published and unpublished work. Co-sponsored by Duotrope. Recommended by Reedsy. Judged by Jendi Reiter and Lauren Singer. Deadline: April 1. Winners announced on August 15. View website or view flyer to learn more.
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Our Lady of the Lake University offers a 100% online Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts (MA-MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice. These programs prepare critically engaged and socially aware scholars, writers, educators, and professionals. This nationally unique, virtual program combines creativity with practical skills and critical knowledge, while keeping in mind the pursuit of social justice. View flyer or visit website to learn more.
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And just like that February is more than half over already. From unseasonable warm weather to bad storms, it’s a good time to stay inside editing, writing, and submitting. Let NewPages help you out with our Weekly Roundup for the week of February 17, 2023.
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A Plucked Zither by Phuong T. Vuong Red Hen Press, June 2023
A Plucked Zither by Phuong Vuong explores what happens to language and thus emotions and relationships under conditions of migration, specifically refugee migration from Vietnam and its aftermath. Crisscrossing between making a home in the US and a home in Vietnam, the speaker tries nonlinear, multilingual voice(s) that demonstrate the disparate nature of memory and the operation of other ways of knowing. Efforts to speak reflect the severing created by historical forces of war and imperialism, while speaking makes connection possible and remains tied to that very history. Vuong leans on the anti-war Vietnamese singer and songwriter, Trịnh Công Sơn, for a poetic lineage on grief, longing, and justice. Rather than being sunken with loss, the speaker(s) move with it, leaping across gaps.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Sponsored by Oklahoma State University and Aquinas College and facilitated by members of NCTE’s ELATE Commission on the Study and Teaching of Young Adult Literature, the sixth annual Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature will be held fully online Friday, April 21, 2023. The Call for Proposals is open until February 27 and is open to Classroom Practice Sessions, Research Presentations, and Panel Presentations. Registration for the event opens on March 1, 2023. For full details, visit the YAL Summit website.
The Cloudscent Journal is a new online publication of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art from contributors ages 12-25. With the mission “to provide the space of artistic freedom and safety for youth creatives,” The Cloudscent Journal is aptly named after “the seemingly limitless yet youthful nature of the sky,” which Founder and Editor-in-Chief Vivan Huang says has inspired their desire “to provide artistic freedom and expression of young artists in hopes to publish work that is imaginative, explorative, and transcendent of all boundaries.”
Pink Noise by Kevin Holden Nightboat Books, April 2023
Kevin Holden’s Pink Noise orbits in spaces of memory, longing, violence, solidarity, the ecological, and the mystical. Experimental in its forms and lexicon, in poems ranging widely in style and scale, it moves through layers of musical intensity as it reworks the visual space of the page to generate sensations of presence and revelation. Simultaneously lucid and syntactically disjunctive, these poems are queer and radical not only in their content but in their grammar.
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The Taco Boat by Al Ortolani NYQ Books, October 2022
Al Ortolani’s most recent collection of poems, The Taco Boat, focuses not just on the people of the American Midwest, but on the connection to the humor and pragmatism of working men and women. His poems are vignettes from the fields of Kansas, the hills of the Ozarks, and the streets of Kansas City. They are about good dogs and crazy cats. His people are family and strangers alike. Both are seen with an empathetic eye. They share an attachment to the joys and exasperations of being human, struggling to understand, to thrive. The poems in The Taco Boat step back from the day-to-day with an acceptance of the life its characters have been tossed into. The images are frequently taken from the natural world, but just as often are from the mechanic’s garage, the fast-food restaurant, the baseball diamond, the assisted living cafeteria. The poems in The Taco Boat are about the relationships people build, dismantle, and build again.
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For Austen fans and lovers of wise words, Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom: Words on Love, Life, Society, and Literature compiled by Andrea Kirk Assaf, provides a genuine treasure trove. While “little,” this is a chonky volume: 4.25 x 5 inches and a full inch thick with 400 pages. Still, it is perfectly weighted for tossing in a bag without getting lost, and this is definitely one to take along. The book is divided into eight themed sections: Love & Longing; Friendship; Home & Society; On Being a Woman; Life, Death, and Spirituality; The Arts, Intellect, and Literature; Good Manners, Virtue, and Vice; A Philosophy of Life. Each page houses only one quote, making this the perfect “prompt” book for writing, mantra, and meditation. More than I anticipated, and much to my delight, in addition to quotes from Austen’s novels, there are also many entries culled from “her prayers, poems, and amusing, self-deprecating personal letters, most of which were addressed to her best friend and sister, Cassandra.” At the close of the volume are thirty-two blank pages for readers to pen their own favorites or reflections or ‘overheard gems,’ making this a perfect companion only in want of a pen to be complete. Assaf has curated a wonderful collection here, her other works encompassing popes and saints, precisely in line with the reverence Austen deserves.
Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom by Andrea Kirk Assaf. Hampton Road Publishing, March 1, 2023.
Reviewer bio: Denise Hill is Editor of NewPages.com and reviews books she chooses based on her own personal interests.
Only and Ever This by J. A. Tyler Dzanc Books, February 2023
In J. A. Tyler’s newest novel, Only and Ever This, a mother clings to twin sons, desperate to keep them from becoming their father, a pirate forever sailing away. In this rain-soaked township, she will attempt to mummify them, piece by piece, to stop them from growing up, a hope founded in magic and immortality. Meanwhile, their father obsesses the seas with his own belief in ever-lasting life, learning too late that his heart belongs on shore.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The February 2023 issue of Poetry includes the special feature I Hope You LIke Being Here With Me: The Works of William J. Harris with an introduction by Howard Rambsy II and a collection of twenty poems by Harris, an interview, and additional commentaries by Lauri Scheyer and Cornelius Eady. The issue also includes new works from over a dozen contemporary poets. Poetry can be read in full online for free or delivered to your doorstep by subscription.
A new year is upon us. But, as usual, what has really changed? Fear not, however – if something truly different is what you’re looking for, perhaps The Opiate, Vol. 32 can assist. For it contains audacious fiction from Camille Boulay, Ben Rosenstock, Megan Bowyer, and Ryder LeVieux, as well as piercing poetry from Susie Gharib, Steve Denehan, Rochelle Jewel Shapiro, E Kidd, Cathy Allman, Colleen Surprise Jones, Mike Wilson, Barbara Tramonte, Chiara Maxia, Mark Simpson, Ron Kolm, and Lorelei Bacht. Maybe the new year is off to a promising start after all… So what are you waiting for? Get dosed!
Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín by Oisín Breen Downingield Press, November 2023
Music, language, and the relationship between love, loss, meaning, and identity shape this second collection from Irish poet Oisín Breen. Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín is a collection of two of the longer-form works Breen favors alongside a series of shorter naturalistic pieces that take common subjects, from the rearing of ducklings to young lust, then subvert them by employing an atypical gaze. Of the two longer pieces, the title work, “Lilies,” infuses the ancient Irish myth, Tochmarc Etine, into a contemporary story of motherloss, aging, and sexual awakening. The second, “Ana Rua,” is an avant-garde incantation of love. Characterized by unusual and wide use of language and form, Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín is available through Beir Bua Press.
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Stay True by Hua Hsu is a poignant memoir about growing up, friendship, loss, identity, and the Asian-American experience. Hsu, a New Yorker staff writer, reflects on his time as an undergrad at Berkeley and his unlikely friend Ken.
An Abercrombie-wearing frat boy, Ken’s Japanese American upbringing emboldens him while Hsu is quieted by his immigrant Tawainese childhood. For example, Ken refuses to remove his shoes upon entering the house and directly calls out a casting director by asking why there weren’t more Asian-Americans on MTV. Meanwhile, Hsu rejects anything mainstream; he opts to stay in on Friday nights instead of partying and listens to intentionally curated music. Ken lives loudly and “wanted to see himself in the world” whereas Hsu contemplates how “Ken noticed that I never really went out. More important, he noticed that I hoped to be noticed for this.” Ultimately, Ken’s foil forces Hsu to examine his identity while learning how to loosen up and experience life more fully.
When Ken is senselessly murdered, Hsu turns to writing as a means to cope with the loss of a valued friend. His mother believes Hsu and his friends “had to find a way to get on with our lives.”
Stay True is the result of years of reflection about the ways an ordinary friendship shapes our life long after the friend is gone.
Reviewer bio: Taylor Murphy is a sales manager by day and an English graduate student by night. When she’s not juggling work and school, you can find her snuggled up with her adorable pug and a good book, spending time by the sea, or catching a Boston Celtics game. Her twitter handle is @tayfran and is an amalgamation of the aforementioned things she loves most.
Salamander 55 features their 2022 Fiction Contest Winners – Hassaan Mirza and Mark Doyle – as well as fiction by Josie Tolin and Evelyn Maguire, nonfiction by Brad Wetherell, and reviews of work by Artress Bethany White, Chloe Caldwell, Derrick Austin, C.T. Salazar, and Cyrus Cassells. With an art portfolio and cover work by Ruth Marie, this new issue also features the work of over fifty poets, including Keetje Kuipers, Ana María Caballero, Chim Sher Ting, Despy Boutris, William Snyder, Brandel France de Bravo, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, S.D. Horvath, Daniel Meltz, Ugochukwu Damian Okpara, Jennifer Saunders, and many more.
Ghost Apples by Katharine Coles Red Hen Press, May 2023
In her ninth collection of poems, Ghost Apples, Katharine Coles interrogates and celebrates her relationship with the natural world and the various creatures who inhabit it, and in doing so asks what it means to be sentient and mortal on a fragile planet. From her own pet parrot, Henri, to the birds her husband attracts to their feeders, to the wildlife who live just outside—and regularly cross—her property on the wild edge of Salt Lake City, she uses her capacity for intense observation and meditation to think her way into other lives and possible shared futures, both good and bad.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
In urgent vulnerability, Heather A Warren’s debut collection, Binded, discloses their reality of living nonbinary in the rural context of Alaska – “I sew myself together / again and again.” With breasts bound by compression, these poems explore the space that binds the body into itself, stuck in unrelenting forces of binary politics and violence. Each poem is a stitching and restitching of the self—an examination of trans-survival. This is a courageous collection—an anthem of Queer resilience and a reminder of the healing powers of community care.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Alejandro Zambra’s most recent novel, Chilean Poet, follows budding poet Gonzalo through his adolescence, followed by a fortuitous meeting with his first love Carla, and the family they start together with her six-year-old son Vincente.
It’s a story about poetry and poets in Chile, where it is los sueños de los niños – a child’s dream – to become a poet. It’s also a commentary on family. Gonzalo delves into the Spanish for stepfather – padastro – and is upset by the negative connotations the -astro suffix carries. Though language fails us sometimes, Gonzalo develops a relationship with Vincente that is unrestricted by dictionary definitions.
Chilean Poet is realistic and experimental: Gonzalo and Carla separate, his relationship with Vincente fades. After the separation, the narrative follows Vincente through his teenage years, combating similar issues his father had dealt with. One of his lovers becomes the protagonist, before being abandoned by the narrator upon boarding her flight home. The storytelling is erratic, despite its traditional bildungsroman form. It correlates well with lived experience; years flash by in seconds, people come and go, dreams and expectations are rarely satisfied in full.
Zambra has crafted a glorious story, full of literary references and astute observations on family and growing up. Notice the missing article in the title; the story is about the idea of being a Chilean Poet; Gonzalo and Vincente just happen to instantiate the idea for a while.
Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell. Granta Books, Febrauary 2023.
Reviewer bio: Colm McKenna is a second-hand bookseller based in Paris. He has published and self-published an array of short stories and articles, hoping to eventually release a collection of stories. He is mainly interested in the works of John Cowper Powys, Claude Houghton and a range of Latin American writers.
The poems in Clint Margrave’s Visitor, travel to distant lands and familiar ones, through museum doors and down the aisles of grocery stores, into the pages of books and along the shared walls of an apartment complex, far out in space and up close in the inner space of love and loss, life and death. Visitor is a collection that calls on readers to let it in. Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including Lying Bastard, Salute the Wreckage, and The Early Death of Men. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Rattle, The Moth, Ambit, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
February may be one of the shortest months of the year, but it’s not light on submission opportunities. We had a lot of new calls for submissions and writing contests added recently. Granted…not all of them are February deadlines.
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Keşke by Jennifer A. Reimer Airlie Press, October 2022
Wistful memory, future longing, and nostalgia for unrealized possibilities, Jennifer Reimer’s Keşke joins the ancient and the modern to the intense lyric experience of self-discovery. Watery scenes rewrite Homeric myth with a feminist eye while verses unfold inner worlds with tangible sensuality. Experimental yet measured, Keşke is shaped by forgotten caves, ancient ruins, wave-battered ships, and the ragged angularity of the Mediterranean coast. Evoking desire for what is absent, Keşke traverses the slipping movement of time and attachment, hope and impossibility, with a clear eye and a passionate hunger for where and what we might have been.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Chinchillas are amazing little creatures that have grown in popularity as household pets over the years. Touted as quiet, clean, and attractive, even I have been tempted to bring one into the family. But the added responsibility of supporting another life form stops me short, which is why I was all on board for the new young writer’s publication, Chinchilla Lit. Publishing poetry, prose, plays/scripts, and visual art by contributors ages 11-25, the site greets visitors with cuddly chinchilla portraits and an equally soothing graphic layout and design.
“The chinchilla perfectly represents the welcoming, cozy atmosphere we hope to foster in this community,” the Chinchilla Lit Editorial Team says. “When writers submit to Chinchilla Lit, they know they can trust us with their work. As young writers ourselves, we understand how intimidating the publication world can seem, especially for those who are just entering it. In creating our magazine, we aimed to become a friendly, accessible face that encouraged writers instead of scaring them.”
Throughout the Winter/Spring 2023 issue of Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts, unexpected truths are discovered through all genres. Sometimes the truth can be hard to swallow and in other cases, revelations are surprisingly sweet. The featured essay, “Awakening” by Jane Gabriel, recounts the events of a beautiful, sunny, summer day when she picks up her teenager’s phone only to discover her daughter is plotting a murder and has enlisted the help of someone online. Without warning, a fast-moving, dark storm erupts within the home, and what transpires is sure to leave readers stunned. Kaleidoscope hopes readers will enjoy the well-crafted stories, moving poetry, poignant essays, animal portraiture by Katherine Klimitas, much-needed humor, and a review of the book Being Heumann. Other contributors include Matt Flick, Fay L. Loomis, Stephanie Harper, Alpheus Williams, Sharon Hart Addy, Evelyn Arvey, Carol Zapata-Whelan, Judy Lunsford, Vesper North, Courtney B. Cook, Eric Witchey, Judith Krum, Daylyn Carrigan, Jess Pulver, Kristen Reid, Chelsea Malia Brown, Robin Knight, Hudson Plumb, Conny Borgelioen, Dawn Rachel Carrington, Hannah Sward, Kelley A Pasmanick, and Fionn Pulsifer.
Trevor Ketner’s The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire is a stunning second collection from this National Poetry Series winner. Comprised of 154 sonnets, each anagrammed line-by-line from Shakespeare’s sonnets, the book refracts these lines through the thematic lens of transness, queer desire, kink, and British paganism. The sonnets come together to form a grimoire that casts a trancelike and intense spell on the reader. Centered on love and desire in the English canon, this collection speaks to the ever-emerging and beautiful manifestations of queer love and desire. Relentless, excessive, wild, and tender, The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire sets itself to chanting from beginning to end.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Jelly Bucket, the print annual of Bluegrass Writer Studio, the low-res MFA program at Eastern Kentucky University publishes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art, and 10-minute plays. They are committed to publishing writers from, and writing about, marginalized and under-represented communities. This special section comprises roughly 50% of the issue and is guest-edited by an established writer who is connected in some way to the community being featured. The Summer 2023 issue’s special section is Indigenous Voices and their upcoming issue will feature Nonbinary/Trans Voices. Work from Jelly Bucket has been shortlisted in the Best American anthology series, and they nominate for The Pushcart Prize and PEN America Literary Awards. First-time and emerging authors have appeared alongside Eileen Casey, Ted Kooser, Stuart Dybek, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Sonja Livingston, Frank X. Walker, and Kevin Wilson.
The Poetics of Wrongness by Rachel Zucker Wave Books, February 2023
In her first book of critical non-fiction, The Poetics of Wrongness, poet Rachel Zucker explores wrongness as a foundational orientation of opposition and provocation. Devastating in their revelations, yet hopeful in their commitment to perseverance, these lecture-essays of protest and reckoning resist the notion of being wrong as a stopping point on the road to being right, and insist on wrongness as an analytical lens and way of reading, writing, and living that might create openness, connection, humility, and engagement. Expanded from lectures presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2016, Zucker’s deft dismantling of outdated paradigms of motherhood, aesthetics, feminism, poetics, and politics feel prescient in their urgent destabilization of post-war thinking. In her four essay-lectures (and an appendix of selected, earlier prose), Zucker calls Sharon Olds, Bernadette Mayer, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Alice Notley, Natalie Diaz, Allen Ginsberg, Marina Abramović, and Audre Lorde—among others—into the conversation. This book marks a turning point in Zucker’s significant body of work, documenting her embrace of the multivocality of interview in her podcasting, and resisting the univocality of the lecture as a form of wrongness in and of itself.
In Dreamers Magazine Issue 13, readers will find the feature story, Rosalind Forster’s nonfiction, “Counselling in the Time of Covid: Healing from the Veranda”; the winning story of the 2023 Pen Parentis Fellowship, “After the Storm”; and the winners of the 2022 Dreamers Flash Fiction Contest: “There is Something in the Mirror,” “Your Every Breath,” and “The Last Shift.” Readers can purchase both the digital and print versions, as well as back issues on the publication’s website. Dreamers is “a heartfelt literary organization and writers retreat” near Sauble Beach, Ontario, Canada. Their magazine is published tri-annually and sent to hundreds of subscribers across North America and Europe.
THIRDOUROBOROS by Richard Kostelanetz NYQ Books, September 2022
Richard Kostelanetz says in his preface to THIRDOUROBOROS, “When I first heard the epithet afterimage as an honorific among visual artists, I recognized it as analogous to the strongest lines in strictly verbal poetry.” In his third installment of this series, Kostelanetz visually lays out words in circles. And just like the ancient symbol, allows them to devour themselves as much as they create themselves as afterimages are embedded in the reader’s mind. The two preceding books in this series are OUROBOROS and SECONDOUROBOROS, also from NYQ Books.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Animal Afterlife by Jaya Stenquist Airlie Press, September 2022
The voices of near-extinct animals create troubled echoes in Jaya Stenquist’s debut collection, Animal Afterlife, winner of The Airlie Prize 2021. In fragmented reincarnations, these poems reach for the limits of humanity, the boundaries of species, and the laws of embodiment. Here, sensations become the mechanism for insight. With lithe lyric power, Stenquist builds a world of impossibilities, a language for the binturong, the eyeless spider, the siren of Canosa, and wild ponies of England; communications and intermingling with the human that can never be preserved, only imagined. As the Earth continues to change during its Sixth Great Extinction, Animal Afterlife creates an archive of spellbinding ghosts.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
River Heron Review‘s double release, Issue 6.1 and River Heron Editors’ Prize, are now live and feature their twice-yearly issue with sixteen talented poets, whose work the editors hope amaze readers, and the winner and three finalists of their recent contest. Included in issue 6.1 are Avery Gregurich, Alison Hurwitz, Lake Angela, Gary Thomas, Ann Michael, Steve Banchko, Frances Klein, Jeremy Griffin, Jane Edna Mohler, Kerstin Schulz, Lindsay Rockwell, Sharon Venezio, Gwen Hart, Violets Garcia-Mendoza, Christine Morro, and Abby Murray. River Heron is also excited to release their recent contest issue and publish the award-winning work of winner Nnadi Samuel and finalists Rebecca Brock, Christine Dengenaars, and Jen Stewart.
Lina Meruane’s novel Nervous System evokes the universal fear of illness and death on nearly every page. The story follows Ella through her struggles to finish a doctoral thesis funded entirely by her father’s savings. Her partner, El, is a forensic scientist, who is recovering from an explosion at a work site. After wishing sickness on herself – so she could concentrate solely on her thesis – Ella is suddenly overcome by an undiagnosable illness.
The story is presented in small fragments, often delving into seemingly innocuous memories, to brutal statistics about illness and the end of life on earth. These fragments match the tone of the half-formed anxious thoughts that fill the story. Death is treated as if its reality was becoming clear for the first time. There are lines that could have come from any textbook – “the heart was a muscle that could give out” – but in Nervous System, they lose their objectivity, inducing only fear. References to the ancients’ explanations of illness abound, reflecting the book’s treatment of these grim subjects; the fear and anxiety they evoke remain largely the same, despite technological advances.
Nervous System concerns itself with issues that are hard to accept, but there is solace to be found in hearing another voice confront the hard facts of life on our behalf.
Nervous System by Lina Meruane, translated by Megan McDowell. Atlantic Books, February 2022.
Reviewer Bio: Colm McKenna is a second-hand bookseller based in Paris. He has published and self-published an array of short stories and articles, hoping to eventually release a collection of stories. He is mainly interested in the works of John Cowper Powys, Claude Houghton and a range of Latin American writers.
