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At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

New Book :: Warrior Spirit

Warrior Spirit by Herman J. Viola published by University of Oklahoma Press book cover image

Warrior Spirit: The STory of Native American Patriotism and Heroism
Military History by Herman J. Viola
The University of Oklahoma Press, March 2022

For decades, American schoolchildren have learned only a smattering of facts about Native American peoples, especially when it comes to service in the U.S. military. They might know that Navajos served as Code Talkers during World War II, but more often they learn that Native Americans were enemies of the United States, not allies or patriots. In Warrior Spirit, author Herman J. Viola corrects the record by highlighting the military service—and major sacrifices—of Native American soldiers and veterans in the U.S. armed services. Warrior Spirit introduces readers to unsung heroes, from the first Native guides and soldiers during the Revolutionary War to those servicemen and -women who ventured to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Herman J. Viola is Director of Quincentenary Programs in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Other contributors include Ellen Baumler, Cheryl Huges, and Michelle Pearson, with a foreword by Debra Kay Mooney.

New Lit on the Block :: The Earth Chronicles

The Earth Chronicles online newspaper logo image

What happens when a high school student in love with writing since the third grade grows into a climate activist who believes in empowering her fellow youth? The answer is The Earth Chronicles, a student-led environmental newspaper that focuses on youth voices for climate action and awareness about our planet. Julianne Park and her brother, Aiden Park, both Dougherty Valley High School students, say they started The Earth Chronicles during the pandemic “when the wildfires raged across California and near our homes. We were scared and we saw fear on the faces of our friends and family. But we decided to turn this around. Our goal is to spread awareness and educate people about what is happening on our planet. Through writing, we want to empower students to fight climate change in their own unique ways and equip them with the tools they need for the future.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: The Earth Chronicles”

New Book :: Without Goodbyes

Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake Poetry by Ginny Lowe Connors book cover image

Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake
Poetry by Ginny Lowe Connors
Turning Point, December 2021

Without Goodbyes by Ginny Lowe Connors is a collection of poems based on a historical event: the infamous 1704 raid on the village of Deerfield, Massachusetts. More than 100 Deerfield residents: men, women, and children, were captured. Then they began the 300-mile trek to New France, the French colony, in Quebec. The poems, which trace a narrative but are lyrical in nature, focus on Joanna Kellogg, an eleven-year-old girl, and two of her siblings. They were adopted into Mohawk families in the village of Kahnawake, a Mohawk community centered around a Jesuit mission. The physical journey Joanna and her siblings took to reach Kahnawake was grueling; of even greater interest is the journey she took to truly become a member of the Mohawk community. Read sample poems here.

Magazine Stand :: The Louisville Review – 91

The Louisville Review literary magazine issue 91 Spring 2022 cover image

The Louisville Review, Number 91, Spring 2022, after being supported for 45 years by higher educational institutions is now an independent publication. As Editor Sena Jeter Naslund shares in the Editor’s Note, her home has become the new “home” of The Louisville Review – a home “haunted” by the ghost of little-known poet Madison Cawein, who lived there over 100 years ago, and who published a poem that contained the phrase “waste land” – inspiring the more likely known T.S. Eliot’s work, “The Waste Land.” And so, Sena tells readers, “it pays off to read small literary mags, as well as to publish in them. . . And it pays off to SUBSCRIBE to them, for many reasons, but also so that you won’t miss out on some important trigger to your own imagination.” Here! Here!

The newest issue of The Louisville Review features ample imagination starters, with Poetry by Mary Ann Samyn, Adrian Blevins, Adam Tavel, Kyle D. Craig, Diamond Forde, Ann Pedone, Rachel Whalen, Kevin McLellan, Christopher Howell, Roy Bentley, Gabriel Welsch, Clay Cantrell, James Hejna, Rolly Kent, Alamgir Hashmi, Jack Ridl, Don Bogen, and Michael Mark. Fiction – which, get this, is “arranged to spotlight the progressive ages of the various protagonists” – ! – by Jane Ogburn Dorfman, Dennis Hurley, Patricia Dutt, Rebecca Bernard, Edward Jackson, John Sims Jeter, S. A. Griffin, and Marguerite Alley. And my all-time favorite section, “Cornerstone,” featuringing work by writers K-12: Saanvi Mundra, Kay Lee, Jiayi Shao, Haile Espin, Henry Phoel, Bravery Grace Boes, Alexander Miller, Matteo Tremaine Pavlenko, and Emma Catherine Hoff.

Cover art “Table For . . . ” by Joyce Gardner.

New & Noted Lit and Alt Mags – July 2022

NewPages receives many wonderful literary magazine and alternative magazine titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Mag Issues” tag under “Popular Topics.” If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring/Summer 2022
The American Poetry Review, July/August 2022
Arkansas Review, 53.1
Bellingham Review, 84
Blue Collar Review, Spring 2022
Brick, 109
Brilliant Flash Fiction, June 2022
Carve, Summer 2022
The Cincinnati Review, 19.1
Cleaver, Summer 2022
Cream City Review, 46.1
Cutleaf, 2.14
The Dillydoun Review, June 2022
Driftwood Press, 9.2
Event, 51.1
Five Points, 21.2
Freefall, Spring 2022
Gay & Lesbian Review, July-August 2022
Good River Review, 3
Hamilton Arts & Letters, 15.1
The Hollins Critic, June 2022
Image 112
In These Times, July 2022
Inch, Summer 2022
Kenyon Review, July/August 2022
The Lake, July 2022
The Louisville Review, Spring 2022
The Malahat Review, 218
The Missouri Review, Spring 2022
New England Review, Summer 2022
Notre Dame Review, Winter/Spring 2022
Off the Coast, Summer 2022
One Story, 290
Otis Nebula, 17
Pembroke Magazine, 54
Poetry, July/August 2022
Prairie Schooner, Fall 2021
Reckoning, 6
Room, 45.2
Ruminate, Spring/Summer 2022
Salamander, Spring/Summer 2022
The Shore, 14
Sleet, Summer 2022
Superpresent, Summer 2022
Thema, Summer 2022
The Tiger Moth Review, 8
World Literature Today, July/August 2022
The Woven Tale Press, July 2022
Writing Disorder, Summer 2022
Yellow Medicine Review, Spring 2022

Book Review :: More or Less by Susannah Q. Pratt

More or Less by Susannah Q. Pratt book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

The premise of Susannah Q. Pratt’s collection of essays is in her subtitle: Essays from a Year of No Buying. After becoming overwhelmed by how much she and her family owned, she convinced her husband and three teenage boys—through her use of a PowerPoint—to go one year without buying anything other than what was necessary. Her project raises questions about what is necessary, what we actually need to live meaningful lives in the twenty-first century, and the importance we attach to what we buy, both in healthy and unhealthy ways. At her best, Pratt’s essays explore important questions of gender, class, and privilege, examining the ways aspects of our identities impact what we’re able to buy and own. While Pratt credits an essay by Ann Patchett in 2017 on a similar subject, I was surprised she didn’t mention Judith Levine’s 2007 book Not Buying It, in which Levine takes on the same project. Pratt’s essays are a solid update to Levine, given how the world has changed in fifteen years, especially as the rise of online shopping has made buying unnecessary items even easier, but interacting with one who came before would make her work even stronger.

More or Less: Essays from a Year of No Buying by Susannah Q. Pratt. Eastover Press, February 2022.

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

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

Magazine Stand :: EVENT – 51.1

Event literary magazine issue 51.1 cover image

The newest issue of EVENT print publication of poetry and prose features their 2021 Non-Fiction Contest finalists with introductory commentary by Judge David A. Robertson, who writes, “in the end, that’s what writing stories is all about: connecting. You connect with your readers. They connect with something within themselves or to each other.” The winning entries: 1st Place “Penance” by Cayenne Bradley; 2nd Place “All My Love, Alex” by Vicki McLeod; 3rd Place“One Route, Over and Over” by Nicole Boyce. Also included in this issue is Poetry by Matsuki Masutani, Julian Gunn, Russell Thornton, Laurie D. Graham, Vincent McGillivray, Mark O. Goodwin, Zoe Landale, Kate Marshall Flaherty, Dan MacIsaac, J.G. Chayko, and Erin Kirsh; Fiction by Brian Moore, Joel Fishbane, and Adrian Markle; and numerous reviews of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The next deadline for EVENT‘s 2022 Non-Fiction Contest is October 15. More details on their website here.

Book Review :: Contain by Cynthia Hogue

Contain poetry chapbook by Cynthia Hogue published by Tram Editions book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

In her chapbook Contain, poet Cynthia Hogue responds to artist Morgan O’Hara’s mandala-like series “Nineteen Forms of Containment.” O’Hara made her drawings on the back of The New York Times articles that she read during the height of the pandemic, and Hogue continues that recto-verso interactive throughout her chapbook. The poems on the recto side respond to O’Hara’s drawings and those on the verso side to The Times articles. The correspondences are non-interpretative, various, and layered. In some cases, news stories have been directly quoted to make cento-like poems, and given that the poems stay within the eight- to twelve-line range, the rondeau, triolet, and sonnet forms loom. The variety of poetic containers might be thought of as an analog for the various ways and by what means we each were contained during lockdown—by the coronavirus pandemic—and by social justice-related realities of the “circle wherein we live.” Hogue calls particular attention to first responders, long-haul truckers, food banks, racially motivated murders, and the climate crisis as “a way / of putting word to something / for which there are no words.” By “inward- / turning,” acknowledging the anxiety and isolation of our lives, these tender and humble poems explore the “global operation of containment”—what and who holds us. Which is captivity and which embrace. Beautiful! Hurrah new chapbook publisher, Tram Editions!


Contain by Cynthia Hogue. Tram Editions, June 2022.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems are forthcoming.

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

New Book :: Slight Return

Slight Return poetry by Rebecca Wolff book cover image

Slight Return
Poetry by Rebecca Wolff
Wave Books, October 2022

In her new collection, renowned publisher and poet Rebecca Wolff voyages in the myopia of American consumer consciousness—erotic regard, spiritual FOMO, gentrification, branding—without destination. Labyrinthine in their paradoxical musings and incisive in their witty recriminations, these poems grapple with the hubris and dysmorphia of the soul. Wolff is a poet that is unafraid to be a querent, not only of sages (“I only hang out with people / who are psychic / anything else is a / waste of precious / continuity”) but of language itself (“How else is one to know how to proceed / How is one to make a motion against— / electric word life”) In Slight Return, the journey is infinite and elusive—aspiring in the best way toward a point of diminishing returns and withholding any promise of a comfortable landing.

Magazine Stand :: Driftwood Press – Issue 9.2

Driftwood Press online literary and art magazine Issue 9.2 cover image

Driftwood Press will be switching to an annual anthology structure, so this is the final “biannual” issue for readers to enjoy. The latest short stories “Winged,” “Sore Vexed,” and “The Great Fall” show off the versatility of Driftwood Press like no other issue: readers are moved from a war-torn country to a Norweigian countryside, then to a global pandemic of missing memories. This issue also includes numerous poems investigating the paranormal, gun violence, familial strife, and more.

Driftwood Press also offers readers interviews with most of their contributors, with this issue featuring Chad Gusler, Caroline Bock, Kate Griffin, Daisuke Shen, Samantha Padgett, Emily DeMaio Newton, Danae Younge, Kindall Fredricks, Roben Gow, Danielle Shorr, Laura Goldin, Adriana Stimola, Kelly Gray, Amanda Hartzell, Austin Sanchez-Moran, Daniel Ferreira, and Amanda Ngo and Kendall Krantz, and additional works by Maxime Cousineau-Pérusse, Triin Paja, and Sofia Sears.

Magazine Stand :: Sleet – Summer 2022

Sleet online literary magazine summer 2022 issue logo image

Summer Sleet 2022 is now online! It’s a beautiful, especially moving edition featuring student poets from Thunder Mountain and Yaakoosge Daakahidi high schools in Juneau, Alaska, in a “By Invitation Only” category. David Buck, Nakima Budke, Joseph Cavanaugh, Elizabeth Djajalie, and Savanna Tisher offer readers a view of the Alaskan landscape and what it means to “be from” this vast northern community. Summer Sleet 2022 also hosts Poetry by Samir Atassi, Nancy Botkin, Jack Chielli, E.J. Evans, Marsha Foss, Scott Gardner, Mom’s Dementia, Paul Ilechko, Kathryn Kysar, Debbie Laffin, John Palen, Joan Roger, Dan Sicoli, Suzanne Swanson, Matthew A. Toll, Cody Triplett, Jay Wittenberg; Creative Nonfiction by Mary Casey Diana, Mariana Navarrete, Anthony J. Mohr; Fiction by Vicki Addesso, Scott Gardner, Mike Herndon, Jerry Kivelä; and a fun section called “Irregulars” with unique contributions from Melanie Alberts, Kathryn Kysar, Mary Lewis, Colette Parris, Holly Pelesky, Edwina Shaw, Tee, and T. Wallace. Sleet is free to read online, and Sleet is currently open for submissions until August 31, 2022. All work, all topics welcome with a special theme for the winter edition: TATTOOS. Visit their website for more information.

Book Review :: Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo

Sankofa a novel by Chibundu Onuzo published by Catapult Press book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Chibundu Onuzo’s novel Sankofa follows Anna Graham—a middle-aged British woman who goes to Bamana, a fictional African country, to find her father—as she tries to understand her mixed-race heritage. Raised by her single white mother, Anna always struggled with her identity, as she knew almost nothing of her Bamanian father. Anna lived a sheltered life with a husband (from whom she is now separated because of his recent affair) who took care of everything for her, so he and their daughter are surprised when she travels to Bamana alone. I have two minor complaints: first, the ending is a bit too neatly tied together in terms of Anna’s understanding of her identity; second, some plot developments similarly seemed too easy to predict, though Anna’s naivete prevents her from seeing what has happened. However, Anna’s grappling with her identity is a useful metaphor for a postcolonial Africa still coming to terms with the multiple strands of cultural history that make the countries what they have become. The novel serves as a healthy reminder to Americans and Europeans that African countries’ histories are more complex than they seem to those on the outside.

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo. Catapult, October 2021.

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/.

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

July 2022 eLitPak :: Issue 85 of Kaleidoscope Available Now! Accepting Submissions Year-round.

Screenshot of Kaleidoscope's July 2022 eLitPak Flyer
click image to open PDF

In this issue you’ll find nuggets of contentment as authors share stories of disability and the connections they experience with those who travel this journey with them. A pioneer in its field, Kaleidoscope magazine publishes literature and artwork that creatively explore the experience of disability. Submit your best work to us today! Visit our website or view our flyer for more information.

If you’re not a current NewPages Newsletter subscriber, you can access the full July 2022 eLitPak here.

Book Review :: Time/Tempo by Laura Cesarco Eglin

Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath poetry chapbook by Laura Cesarco Eglin published by Spoonfuls Chapbooks book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

In her chapbook Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath, Laura Cesarco Eglin gives her poetic attention to a “tension of simultaneity,” tracking temporal interruptions, disruptions, and variations, and how those time-based movements affect breath within a particular life that withstands a cancer diagnosis and recovery, illnesses and deaths of beloved family members, and “knowing languages” by undertaking writing and translation. These are poems that want “to keep track of leaving”: the departures of words on breaths and “the hours that come and those that stay, those that leave.” Time unfolds “no matter what.” Yet, there is the recognition that “nothing is lost.” That acknowledgment makes room for inquiry: “What is left of me after I’ve left a place, after it has left me.” One response to that query might be: These poems! The impressions and residues left with this reader—“a scar / of what’s no longer.”


Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath by Laura Cesarco Eglin. Spoonfuls Chapbooks, April 2022.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems are forthcoming.

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

New Book :: The Displaced

The Displaced a novel by Rodrigo Ribera d'Ebre book cover image

The Displaced
Fiction by Rodrigo Ribera d’Ebre
Arte Público Press, June 2022

Mikey and Lurch are worlds apart, even if they’re from the same Mexican neighborhood in West Los Angeles. Mikey just graduated from UCLA and is determined to get out. Lurch, the leader of the Culver City gang, loves the hood—its projects, beat-up apartments, and crackheads—more than his own life. They hook up with a doctor, who is from the same area. He put himself through medical school selling dope and now is back, running a clinic across from the Mar Vista Gardens housing project. All three notice changes. Suddenly there are outsiders everywhere: white people with beards, wearing V-neck sweaters and plaid shirts, running in jogging outfits or riding bikes with helmets, oblivious to the gangbangers. They’re artists, students, developers and entrepreneurs; a plague, pushing people out of their homes. Old people on fixed incomes start getting evicted or foreclosed on and the residents of the projects are being relocated, but some of the locals aren’t going to sit by without a fight. Soon they are fortifying the housing projects and stockpiling assault weapons! This absorbing novel follows a group of people who are determined to save their homes and neighborhood from gentrification, even if it means turning to violence.

July 2022 eLitPak :: Divot Poetry Reading for Issues 5 & 6

Screenshot of Divot Poetry's flyer for the June 2022 eLitPak
click image to open PDF

Rolling submission deadline
Divot Poetry wants to read your poems for Issues 5 and 6. We value fresh imagery and startling ways to describe the human condition. See our submission guidelines for full information. We look forward to reading your poetry; you inspire us. View flyer or visit website to learn more.

Not a NewPages Newsletter subscriber yet? View the full July 2022 eLitPak here.

July 2022 eLitPak :: Get These Summer 2022 Titles from Livingston Press

Screenshot of Summer 2022 Titles from Livingston Press flyer for the June 2022 eLitPak
click image to open PDF

New from Livingston Press! Aftershock by George H. Wolfe is a novel about GI’s returning from WWII to about-face and enter colleges under the GI Bill. Zero to Ten: Nursing on the Floor by Patricia Taylor is a story collection about nursing, its joys, frustrations, and heartbreak. See flyer for more details or visit website.

Not a NewPages Newsletter subscriber yet? View the full July 2022 eLitPak here.

Magazine Stand :: Otis Nebula – 17

Otis Nebula online literary magazine Issue 17 cover image

Otis Nebula Editor Andrea Perkins writes that the newest issue (#17) “features the work of thirteen writers ranging from the deeply established to one who is debuting in our ‘pages.’ We also invited our contributors to participate in the creation of an ‘otis,’ which is a linked poem form generated by a simple prompt.” Eleven contributors collaborated, “donating” seed words for each other, the editors chipping in, so that each writer had twelve words to incorporate. Otis Nebula provides full guidelines for this form on their site here. Otis Nebula is a digital magazine with all issues available for free online. Contributors to Issue 17 include Peter Cole Friedman, Nathaniel Kennon Perkins, J.D. Nelson, Cameron Morse, Andrew Haley, Maria Berardi, Jennifer Ruth Jackson, Ken Meisel, Martine van Bijlert, Rebecca Pyle, Mark DeCarteret, Julia Wendell, and Chey Chesser.

July 2022 eLitPak :: 2023 Off the Grid Poetry Prize

Grid Books 2023 Off the Grid Poetry Prize Flyer

Deadline: August 31, 2022
The Off the Grid Poetry Prize recognizes the work of older poets, highlighting important contemporary voices in American poetry. Each year a winner is awarded $1,000 and publication. Contest runs through August 31, 2022. Garrett Hongo will judge. Find full guidelines here or view flyer for more information.

Not a NewPages Newsletter subscriber yet? View the full July 2022 eLitPak here.

Where to Submit Round-up: July 15, 2022

hand holding a pen and writing in a notebook
Photo by Designecologist on Pexels.com

Mid-month is always an important deadline for calls for submissions and writing contests. Check below to see where to submit your work and who has deadlines today and for the rest of the month and beyond.

Want to get alerts for new opportunities? The NewPages weekly newsletter subscribers get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today! You’ll also get our monthly eLitPak (view this month’s here!) along with the occasional promotional emails from advertisers.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: July 15, 2022”

Poem Review :: LOVE by Alex Dimitrov

Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov book cover image

Guest Post by Maureen O’Brien

Recently I found a poem that gave me rare permission to admit how much love I feel, even in the face of cynical, worldly evidence I should just close up my heart until I die. Alex Dimitrov’s poem “Love”, first published in The American Poetry Review and then reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2021 guest edited by Tracy K. Smith, spills and sprawls with nine double-spaced pages of sentences, each one beginning with “I love.” It’s a list poem, predictable in structure—“I love looking at someone without need or panic.”—yet sensual: “I love statues in a downpour.” With these declaratives, I adored how I entered effortlessly into the rhythms and curvatures of the poem.

But more than the syntactical ease, it required no intellectual or political bracing. How often do we encounter text that cools, that refreshes? Dimitrov skips comfortably through the narrator’s life, covering various topics—literature, relationship, time: “I love that a day on Venus lasts longer than a year.” and “I love the blue hours between three and five when Plath wrote Ariel.” This poem possesses a wide lens trained on the interior of the heart, the exterior. With a clear emotional bravery, “Love” unabashedly just admits, through a repeated subject and verb, the truth.


“LOVE” by Alex Dimitrov. Love and Other Poems, Copper Canyon Press, February 2021.

Reviewer bio: Maureen O’Brien is the author of the spiritual memoir What Was Lost: Seeking Refuge in the Psalms (Franciscan Media, 2021). Her next book, Gather the Fragments: Finding Everyday Miracles and Abundance is forthcoming from Franciscan Media (January 2023). She is a contributor to St. Anthony Messenger and the online site Pause+Pray. She has also published a novel, B-mother (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and The Other Cradling, a chapbook of poems (Finishing Line Press). Find her on Instagram: maureen_obrien_writer

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

New Book :: Midstream

Midstream A Novel by Lynn Sloan book cover image

Midstream
Fiction by Lynn Sloan
Fomite Press, August 2022

In Midstream, Lynn Sloan’s second novel, it’s 1974, and America is restless, with the Vietnam War winding to a close, and feminists marching in the streets. Polly Wainwright respects the protesters’ demands for equal pay, but now nearing middle age, won’t risk her security. Her job, being a picture editor at a prestigious publisher, is enviable and too good to lose. Polly is comfortable with her life—her homey Chicago apartment, her war-correspondent boyfriend with the dangerous job that everyone admires, the steady paycheck. Still, she’d once dreamed of making documentary films. When suddenly her life is thrown off-course, Polly slowly begins to view things differently and with growing dissatisfaction. But she can’t shift gears to imagine a different future—until a mysterious letter arrives, changing how she views the one moment in her past when she might have achieved her dreams.

Magazine Stand :: The Missouri Review – Spring 2022

The Missouri Review literary magazine Spring 2022 issue cover image

The Missouri Review Spring 2022 issue (45.1) features the 2021 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize Winners: Alix Christie (fiction), Matthew Wamser (essay), Jennifer Perrine (poetry), as well as a special feature with Michale Millner on the Jack Kerouac Archive and a portfolio of artwork by Kristine Somerville in full color, “Boxed In: The Art of Assemblage.” The issue also includes Poetry from Kelli Russell Agodon and David Moolten, Fiction from Joy Baglio, John Fulton, and Peter Mountford, Essays by Susan Neville and William Roebuck, plus: “America’s Left Bank: Jessie Tarbox Beal’s Greenwich Village Photographs.”

Book Review :: Central Air by George Bilgere

Central Air by George Bilgere book cover image

Guest Post by James Scruton

“They resemble Eskimo Pies,” says George Bilgere of his air-conditioned neighbors in the title poem of his latest collection, Central Air, “or boxes of frozen peas.” Characteristically, he goes on to concede, “Not a bad life, I guess,” though admitting he’d miss the crickets “simmering / through summer, and the love / song of cicadas, burning / all night for each other, insect / ecstasies beyond our dreams.” This even-handedness typifies Bilgere’s approach, the poet awed by his good fortune on a pleasant summer evening (“Ripeness”) but also acknowledging the countless daily injustices suffered by others (“Summer Pass,” “For the Slip ‘N Slide”) as well as horrors on a global scale (“Chernobyl,” “Reichstag”). Bilgere delights in detail (“the stalled machinery” of a dead bee) as much as in the acoustics of language and the subtleties of line. Note the fatigue conveyed by the d’s in his description of a waitress’s voice (“tired, / frayed around the edges”) and the sudden, brightening weightlessness of the two-line stanza that follows:

But what she said hung sparkling
in the air, so masterful…

The collection produces the same heartening effect, Bilgere’s work a balance of light and dark, the amusing and the profound.


Central Air by George Bilgere. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022.

Reviewer bio: James Scruton is the author of two full collections and five chapbooks of poetry as well as dozens of reviews, essays, and articles on poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

New Book :: Pacific Light

Pacific Light poetry by David Mason book cover image

Pacific Light
Poetry by David Mason
Red Hen Press, August 2022

David Mason was born in Washington State, forty-odd degrees north latitude, and now lives on the Australian island of Tasmania, forty-odd degrees south latitude. That Pacific crossing is the work of a lifetime of devotion and change. The rich new poems of Pacific Light explore the implications of the light as well as peace and its opposing forces. What does it mean to be an immigrant and face the ultimate borders of our lives? How can we say the word home and mean it? These questions have obsessed Mason in his major narrative works, The Country I Remember and Ludlow, as well as his lyric and dramatic writing. Pacific Light is a culmination and a deepening of that work, a book of transformations, history and love, endurance and unfathomable beauty, by a poet “at the height of his powers.”

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – July 2022

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviews logo image

The July 2022 issue of The Lake online poetry magazine is now available and features Frank De Canio, Agnieszka Filipek, Jeff Gallagher, Kasha Martin Gauthier, Sarah James, Yvonne Higgins Leach, Beth Mcdonogh, Mark Parsons, Tim Taylor, and Rodney Wood. There are also reviews of George Bilgere’s Central Air and Peter Roberts’ Night Owling, and “One Poem Reviews,” which is one poem from a collection to help writers get the word out about their publications. This month features works by Joanne Durham, Estill Pollock, Susan Taylor, and Melody Wang.

New Book :: American Narratives

American Narrative poetry by T.P. Bird book cover image

American Narratives
Poetry by T.P. Bird
Turning Point, November 2021

In this newest collection of poems, American Narratives, T.P. Bird offers the reader narratives of America that portray the grit of the street, the noise of the crowd, and the softness of the heart in a manner as large and capacious as a myth and a country. Bird is a retired industrial drafter/designer and minister now living in Lexington, Kentucky with his spouse. He has published widely in literary journals and is the author of two previous chapbooks, Mystery and Imperfections and Scenes and Speculations. Read sample poems here.

Event :: Free ELA PD 5 Days of Poetry

Ethical ELA July 2022 Open Write logo image

Every month, Ethical ELA hosts a five-day “Open Write” and invites English Language Arts teachers to join in! ELA is broadly defined to include active and retired K-12 and college/university teachers as well as teachers of English and language arts in a variety of settings. The Open Write is five days of poetry writing developed by different educators with 30 to 100 of teachers participating at various times and thousands observing and borrowing resources. Founded by Sarah Donovan in 2005, this remains a free and ad-free event. I personally participate in this event and look forward to it every month! Some months I miss, sometimes I miss a poem or two, and I know some who visit each month for the prompts but never post them to the site, and that’s okay – however you choose to approach it.

Sarah offers these simple guidelines for first-timers:

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New Book :: Not a Soul but Us

Not a Soul but Us A Story in 84 Sonnets by Richard Smith book cover image

Not a Soul but Us: A Story in 84 Sonnets
Poetry by Richard Smith
Bauhan Publishing, April 2022

Not a Soul but Us: A Story in 84 Sonnets by Richard Smith is the winning collection of the 2021 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. In it, Smith tells the story of mid-fourteenth century Yorkshire, when the plague pandemic wipes out half the inhabitants of a remote village. Left behind is a twelve-year-old shepherd boy, who, with the help of his dog, survives near-starvation and a brutal winter and keeps his flock alive. In the months and years that follow, he struggles to reconnect with the life around him. Judge Meg Kearney said this of her selection, “A mastery of craft. Music. An undulating urgency of tone that leaves no doubt about the emotional impulse that drives the work. A voice that you trust, even when the syntax or the material is difficult. And that material needs to feel relevant, of substance, necessary. Not a Soul But Us is an achievement on every front.”

Magazine Stand :: The Woven Tale Press – July 2022

The Woven Tale Press issue 10 number 5 literary magazine cover image

The July 2022 issue of The Woven Tale Press Literary and Fine Art Magazine promises “haunting portraiture, the surreal, architectural mixed media, poetry, fiction, and more!” The Woven Tale Press “strives to grow the online presence of noteworthy writers and visual artists” and encourages readers to visit contributors’ websites. Featured this month are works by Simon Berson, Ann-Marie Brown, billy cancel, Brut Carniollus, Lawrence F. Farrar, Chuck Fischer, David Mason, Robert Garner McBrearty, David Provan, Carolyn Schlam, and Elizabeth Searle. Readers can subscribe for free email delivery and view the publication online. Cover image by Carolyn Schlam.

Event :: Register for the 2022 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop

This year’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop will be taking place October 20 through 22. You get to enjoy celebrated comedians and authors, including “Cathy” cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, SNL legend Laraine Newman, and more. Deadline to register is October 1 or until the event is sold out. Learn more by stopping by the NewPages Classifieds.

Magazine Stand :: The Tiger Moth Review – Issue 8

The Tiger Moth Review online literary magazine Issue 8 cover image

The Tiger Moth Review Editor Esther Vincent Xueming’s introduction to Issue 8 begins: “This issue celebrates life. // This issue celebrates love. // This issue celebrates joy. // This issue celebrates and sings of the light that continues to shine on endlessly, even after death. This issue celebrates the infinity of time, of love as bending time. This issue chooses to celebrate death as a transition from the physical into the spiritual, as a carrying on rather than an ending of.” Fully online, The Tiger Moth Review features art and literature “that engages with nature, culture, the environment, and ecology.” To carry out this celebration and engagement are works by a global cast of contributors:

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Book Review :: Lucebert: The Collected Poems, Volume 3

Lucebert: The Collected Poems, Volume 3 book cover image

Guest Post by Jason Gordy Walker

The ranting, mischievous, socially engaged verse of Lucebert, the great Dutch poet, painter, and anti-apartheid activist, dazzles (and dizzies) the reader with surrealistic images, quick tone shifts, puns, and jazzy philosophical musings. Published by Green Integer in a pocket-sized, bilingual edition, Volume 3 shows Lucebert, a well-known affiliate of experimental writing movements De Vijftigers and CoBrA, on top of his game. See this tercet from the brief, wry “communiqué”: “through logic people get ahead / shoot for kicks at rats wolves riffraff / god is a pet[.]” Or consider how “…always music makes music / rocking ejector-seat directed / at perilous fluffy down / sweet skirt that frowns / like an enjoying forehead”; images morph into more images, mimicking the consciousness that commits them to paper. Diane Butterman’s translations from the Dutch into English preserve (and transform) the poems’ spirits. In “…and tomorrow the whole world,” a poem full of sharp adjectives, the poet pokes fun at class privilege: “…from our snooty benefits we will if need be / weave a temporary bandage for the world[.]” Lucebert eschews proper punctuation, creating language-rivers, reminding us to be wary of the “…little butcher [who] planned to slaughter the whole nation.”


Lucebert: The Collected Poems, Volume 3 by Lucebert (Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk). Translated and Introduced by Diane Butterman. Green Integer, March 2022.

Bio: Jason Gordy Walker (he/him/his) has received scholarships for his poetry from The New York State Summer Writers Institute and Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference. His book reviews and interviews have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, NewPages, Subtropics, and the Dos Madres Press blog, among others.

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

New Book :: The Girl I Never Knew

The Girl I Never Knew Who Killed Melissa Witt a true crime book by LaDonna Humphrey book cover image

The Girl I Never Knew: Who Killed Melissa Witt?
True Crime by LaDonna Humphrey
Genius Book Publishing, April 2022

For over two decades, the identity of Melissa Witt’s killer has been hidden among the dense trees and thorny undergrowth rooted deeply in the uneven ground of a remote mountaintop in the Ozark National Forest. Determined to find answers, LaDonna Humphrey has spent the past seven years hunting for Melissa’s killer. Her investigation, both thrilling and unpredictable, has led her on a journey like no other, at times her own safety at risk from those who want this mystery to remain unsolved. LaDonna Humphrey is a writer, documentarian, investigative journalist, private investigator, and advocate for victims of crime. “I’m hopeful that the book will put some pressure on some of those people who know they are being looked at [as suspects] but have not been named publicly.” Visit the publisher’s website for links to radio and news media interviews with the author.

New Book :: Blood Snow

Blood Snow poetry by dg nanouk okpik book cover image

Blood Snow
Poetry by dg nanouk okpik
Wave Books, October 2022

American Book Award–winning poet dg okpik’s second collection of poems, Blood Snow, tells a continuum story of a homeland under erasure, in an ethos of erosion, in a multitude of encroaching methane, ice floe, and rising temperatures. Here, in a true Inupiaq voice, okpik’s relationship to language is an access point for understanding larger kinships between animals, peoples, traditions, histories, ancestries, and identities. Through an animist process of transfiguration into a shaman’s omniscient voice, we are greeted with a destabilizing grammar of selfhood. Okpik’s poems have a fraught relationship to her former home in Anchorage, Alaska, a place of unparalleled natural beauty and a traumatic site of devastation for Alaskan native nations and landscapes alike. In this way, okpik’s poetry speaks to the dualistic nature of reality and how one’s existence in the world simultaneously shapes and is shaped by its environs.

Magazine Stand :: Poetry Magazine – July/August 2022

Poetry Magazine July August 2022 issue cover image

The July/August issue of Poetry Magazine is guest-edited by Esther Belin, a Diné (Navajo) multimedia artist and writer, and is dedicated to the topic of  Land Acknowledgments. In the “Dear Reader” introduction, she writes:

“One of the biggest take backs is the re-territorializing of language. In this issue, quite a number of Indigenous writers are expanding poetics, resuscitating tribal languages, refashioning the English language with tribal meter, rhythm, and sound. I hope more than a few readers will understand the significance of this feat. Little more than fifty years ago, many of these writers would have been overlooked, misunderstood, or questioned about the legitimacy of their poetics. This volume acknowledges the history of racism and privilege in how access to publishing has been extended and the selection process of those eventually published. This volume acknowledges that the represented writers merely hint at the momentum of literary sovereignty occurring in Indian country, in addition to Indigenous writers throughout the globe.”

Writers included in this seminal issue are Allison Akootchook Warden, Manny Loley, Beth Piatote, Dean Rader, Abigail Chabitnoy, Valerie Wallace, Elise Paschen, Gabriel Dunsmith, Anthony Cody, Max Early, Franklin K.R. Cline, Michael Thompson, Megha Rao, Jayant Kashyap, Hao Guang Tse, Micaela Merryman, Halee Kirkwood, Ariana Benson, Arthur Sze, Michelle Whitstone, Tina Deschenie, Majda Gama, Ibe Liebenberg, Carol Moldaw, Toni Giselle Stuart, Jake Skeets, Laura Da’, Jay Wieners, Yvonne, Jennifer Militello, Krysten Hill, Jessica Kim, Khải Đơn, Yaccaira Salvatierra, Bai Juyi, Tim Tim Cheng, and Adedayo Agarau. There is also an interview with Arthur Sze. Poetry Magazine and its many wonderful resources are free online.

New Book :: These Dark Skies

These Dark Skies: Reckoning with Identity, Violence, and Power from Abroad a collection of essays by Arianne Zwartjes book cover image

These Dark Skies: Reckoning with Identity, Violence, and Power from Abroad
Essays by Arianne Zwartjes
University of Iowa Press, June 2022

In These Dark Skies, Arianne Zwartjes interweaves the experience of living in the southern Netherlands—with her wife, who is Russian—and the unfolding of both the refugee crisis across Europe and the uptick in terrorist acts in France, Greece, Austria, Germany, and the Balkans. She probes her own subjectivity, as a white American, as a queer woman in a transcultural marriage, as a writer, and as a witness. The essays investigate and meditate on a broad array of related topics, including drone strikes, tear gas, and military intervention; the sugar trade, the Dutch blackface celebration of Zwarte Piet, and constructions of whiteness in Europe and the U.S.; and visual arts of Russian avant-garde painters, an Iraqi choreographer living in Belgium, and German choreographer Pina Bausch.

Book Review :: Rule of Composition by Steve Timm

Rule of Composition by Steve Timm book cover image

Guest Post by Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

The latest book from Steve Timm, Rule of Composition, more than resembles jazz. Giant-of-the-art Cecil Taylor’s album with the Feel Trio, 2 Ts for a lovely T, forms the basis for Timm’s book’s division into “listens,” when the author wrote as an improvisational accompaniment to the 10-CD set. While Timm is 21st Century Wisconsin’s answer to Russian zaum poetry and Dadaist soundscapes, he also diffuses a hyper-inflationary poetics into the nonce words others might dash throughout lyric pieces or isolate in austere minimal poems, spinning out syntactic, phonetic and morphemic swerves — each of which he entrusts to readers’ decipherment. Lines blatz across pages from “Marry pensile attribles / join the scuchus suqologue” to “that’s myander enjourn?” so that “a lipe shangs in the bilence / zeroes aglitter.” Once clought in Timm’s whipnotic enburgonment, the mive glences bursht ignoblistervly. To call his work word-salad by no means disparages it; rather, it suggests a need to elevate the art of the farrago in the culinary imagination. For anyone tired of literature that tells you what or how to think, the book can be purchased online and in-person through Woodland Pattern Book Center and A Room of One’s Own.


Rule of Composition by Steve Timm. Bananaquit Press, 2022.

Reviewer bio: Nicholas Michael Ravnikar makes understanding look like overthinking. He’s currently disabled with mental illnesses. Married with two kids, he enjoys cooking, exercise and meditation. Stay in touch via social media and download free books at bio.fm/nicholasmichaelravnikar.

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

Magazine Stand :: Superpresent – Summer 2022

Superpresent magazine of the arts Summer 2022 issue cover image

Superpresent magazine of the arts Summer 2022 issue is themed “Signs and Symbols,” and the editors comment that “works selected seem both grounded and abstract. Some of the works are mysterious and some surprisingly direct.” Most assuredly, there is a lot to choose from to enjoy, with works from over fifty contributors – prose, poetry, art – and the ever-cool film section with links/QR codes to a unique selection of short art films. Superpresent is available to download as a PDF or by subscription, mailed four times per year.

Magazine Stand :: Brilliant Flash Fiction – June 2022

Brilliant Flash Fiction online literary magazine June 2022 cover image

The June 2022 issue of Brilliant Flash Fiction online literary magazine offers readers a variety of subjects to choose from. Just check out this lineup of stories that adhere to the ‘not more than 1000-word” limit: “Gorilla vs Dogs” by David M. Rubin; “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” by Lauren Voeltz; “Good Neighbors” by Tim Frank; “Far Enough” by Sai Shriram; “Act One, Scene Five” by Rajiv Moté; “My Whole Life” by Elizabeth Kerlikowske; “Love” by Ernesto B. Reyes; “Whiskey” by Sam Selvaggio; “Hockey Night, 1963” by Debra Bennett; and “Wherein the Labyrinth the Fridge Lie” by Nic Arico. It just seems there has to be a story in here for every reader. Check it out today, and if you’ve got your own story to share, BFF is open year-round and is a paying market.

Magazine Stand :: Bellingham Review – Issue 84

Bellingham Review literary magazine Issue 84 cover image

Editor-in-Chief of Bellingham Review since 2015, Susanne Paola Antonetta has announced she will be stepping down from her role to focus more on her own writing and perhaps even start her own small press. She writes, “I’m thrilled to be passing along the editorship to Jane Wong,” poet and nonfiction writer whose most recent book is How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James Press, 2021). Closing out her final issue, Susanne writes, “Literature may not fix our problems, but it fixes us to one another. It allows us to see that the view from another’s space in this world is both akin to ours and radically different [. . . ] each word is an invitation to a longed-for dialogue, on both ends.”

Offering ways to connect in this newest issue of Bellingham Review are the 2021 Contest Winners: Keya Mitra for fiction, Lisa Nikolidakis for nonfiction, and Andrea Hollander for poetry. Also featured is Fiction by Farha Mukri and Marc Vincenz, Nonfiction by Gordon W. Mennenga, L.I. Henley, and “Critical Conversation” by Denise Duhamel & Julie Marie Wade, Poetry by Darius Atefat-Peckham, G.C. Waldrep, Robert Cording, Stacy Boe Miller, Mira Rosenthal, and Martha Silano, Hybrid works by Lissa Batista and Suzanne Manizza Roszak. Cover photo by Susan Bennerstrom.

New Book :: Chronicles of a Luchador

Chronicles of a Luchador YA fiction by Ray Villareal book cover image

Chronicles of a Luchador
YA Fiction by Ray Villareal
Arte Público Press, June 2022

Jesse Baron, the son of the American Championship Wrestling star known as the Angel of Death, is about to graduate from high school. His parents expect him to attend the University of Texas and study mechanical engineering, something he’s not interested in. The young man knows he would be a natural at professional wrestling, and with his father’s help, he might even reach the same level of fame and success. But the Angel of Death, retired from the ACW and running a wrestling promotion and school, refuses to train his son for fear he will choose sports entertainment over a college degree. Jesse decides that once he gets settled at UT, he’s going to look for another place to wrestle. To keep his father from finding out, he’ll promote himself as a masked luchador from Oaxaca, Mexico, named Máscara de la Muerte. When no one will hire him, Jesse reluctantly considers joining a lucha libre organization, even though he doesn’t speak Spanish. Will the fans and his fellow wrestlers see him as a luchador—or just a gringo with a mask?

Book Review :: The Silk The Moths Ignore by Bronwen Tate

The Silk The Moths Ignore poems by Bronwen Tate published by Inlandia Books cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

The Silk the Moths Ignore, Bronwen Tate’s debut and winner of Inlandia Institute’s 2019 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, is to be “read as choreography,” marking “what led to this.” In her poems, Tate makes legible what is illegible about rejection as it concerns motherhood and miscarriage—rejection by a newborn of a mother’s breast and by a woman’s body of a fetus. What are the roles of nature and will? These poems “rage at who names a body,” acknowledge that a man and a woman “carry risk unevenly,” and ultimately recognize “the present carries multiples.” Memory and recovery, balance and counterbalance are important to these poems whose forms toggle between lullaby-like short lyrics and Proustian prose poems. Brevity and extension, lines and sentences, meditative and narrative counterbalancing elements “speak a language no known mother tongued.” Tate is a poet willing to sit with the complexity of human connection: “we seek comfort and reject it.” Her poems “swim against / the waves, held by / what resists,” and, it seems in so doing the grief-currents they swim transform into a “less insistent presence.” Isn’t that what loss eventually becomes? The Silk the Moths Ignore is a collection of lyric ache that brims with “artifacts of hope.”


The Silk the Moths Ignore, Bronwen Tate. Inlandia Books, September 2021.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems are forthcoming.

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.

Where to Submit Round-up: July 8, 2022

hand holding a pen and writing in a notebook
Photo by Designecologist on Pexels.com

Ready to get back into the submission game now that the holiday is over? NewPages has you covered with our Where to Submit Round-up. Take your time and peruse the submission opportunities below to find a home for your work.

Want to get alerts for new opportunities? The NewPages weekly newsletter subscribers get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today! You’ll also get our monthly eLitPak along with the occasional promotional emails from advertisers.

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Book Review :: The Murders of Moisés Ville by Javier Sinay

The Murders of Moises Ville by Javier Sinay book cover image

Guest Post by Ira Smith

Published initially in Argentina in 2013, The Murders of Moisés Ville has only now been made available in English with a wonderful translation by Robert Croll.

In 2009, Javier Sinay, an Argentinian author and journalist, received an interesting email from his father. It referred him to an article published in the late 1940s by his great grandfather, Mijl Hacohen Sinay, detailing the murders of Jews committed in one of the first Jewish colonies in Argentina, Moisés Ville. The history of this colony, long forgotten not just by Sinay’s immediate family but by the Jewish community as a whole, prompts him to investigate the crimes that occurred over a century ago, against the backdrop of hardship and violence that afflicted the settlers.

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New Book :: The Ultimate Havana

The Ultimate Havana: A Willie Cuesta Mystery by John Lantigua book cover image

The Ultimate Havana: A Willie Cuesta Mystery
Fiction by John Lantigua
Arte Público Press, March 2022

Willie Cuesta, former Miami Police detective turned private investigator, is struggling to pay the bills when he receives a call from an old family friend. Cesar Mendoza is the blind, elderly owner of Tabacos El Ciego, a cigar store in Little Havana. Cesar is worried about Victoria Espada, a friend from the old days in Cuba. As a young woman, she was so beautiful that cigar makers competed to put her image on their boxes. She came from a long line of tobacco growers and married a man from an old, respected clan of cigar makers. The couple, who represented one of the great cigar dynasties of all time, fled the island after the revolution, but things didn’t go well. Ernesto Espada ultimately committed suicide, leaving his widow with two young children to raise. Now, her son, a less-than-successful cigar salesman, has gone missing, and the detective is tasked with finding him.

Event :: 2022 Daphne Review Online Mentorship Program Session I

Daphne Review Online Mentorship banner

Every year literary magazine The Daphne Review hosts an online mentorship program for rising seniors. This year they will be hosting three sessions. The first session will take place from July 25 – August 15. In these sessions 5-7 students work with professional writers on a one-on-one basis. See their ad in the NewPages Classifieds to learn more. Mentors and students need to apply for Session I by July 11.

Contest :: Last Call to Enter 2022 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize

Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Contest logo

The 2022 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize closes to entries on July 31! This year’s judge is Juan Felipe Herrera. The winner will receive $1,000, their poem printed on a letterpress broadside, and publication in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine. Learn more about this year’s contest by stopping by their ad in the NewPages Classifieds.

Magazine Stand :: Cleaver – Summer 2022

Cleaver Literary Magazine Summer 2022 issue cover image

The newest issue of Cleaver, the online “cutting-edge art and literary” journal with work from a mix of established and emerging voices features Short Stories by Rebecca Ackermann, Nathan Willis, Mariana Sabino, Lara Markstein, Maggie Mumford, Gemini Wahhaj; Poetry by Mitchell Untch, Sadie Shorr-Parks, Mateo Perez Lara, Mimi Yang, Alex Wells Shapiro, Matt Thomas; Flash Fiction and Nonfiction by Meg Pokrass, Timothy Boudreau, Rosemary Jones, Tess Kelly, Jamie Nielsen, Will Musgrove, Russell Barajas, Francine Witte, Damian Dressick; Creative Nonfiction by Deb Fenwick, Luisa Luo, Peter DeMarco; and “War and Peace 2.0: A Visual Memoir” by Emily Steinberg, Visual Narrative Editor at Cleaver, and “To What Survived” sculpture portfolio by Mario Loprete. This issue’s cover design is by Karen Rile. Cleaver also has daily features an advice column, essays on craft, interviews, comix, and book reviews. The Cleaver Summer Lightning Flash contest is also still open for submissions until August 1.

Book Review :: Hands of Years by Riley Bounds

Hands of Years poetry by Riley Bounds book cover image

Guest Post by Elizabeth Genovise

Hands of Years poetry collection by Riley Bounds chronicles a journey of faith undertaken with open eyes. While stylistically spare (“tall and slim as votive candles”), these poems reach deep, plumbing the seminal moments in the author’s spiritual life and illuminating the healing power of such moments. Death is described as a space where “life simply leaves, vagabond through zodiacal clouds and dust”; to his father, the poet writes, “Your heart was always a war drum, so stay and tithe your noise”; a child’s prayer is “proffered to Who he doesn’t know from the textless hymnal of his solar plexus, the liturgy of bone and marrow.” In the collection’s final piece, Bounds prays that he might one day “hold the hands of years and become the voice I sing, echoing up the wall of our netted souls, refracting each other’s given light.” The power of these poems lies in their meticulous imagery, their brutal honesty, and their bold confrontation with difficult truths. They alternately rattle and soothe, offering a glimpse of light after each forage into the darkness.


Hands of Years by Riley Bounds. Kelsay Press, October 2021.

Reviewer bio: Elizabeth Genovise is an MFA graduate from McNeese State University and the author of four short story collections, the most recent being Palindrome from the Texas Review Press (forthcoming September 2022). www.elizabethgenovisefiction.org/

If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.