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!
If evil is the “absence of empathy,” as defined by G. M. Gilbert, the American psychologist known for his observational commentary during the Nuremberg trials, then Editor Terry L. Kennedy offers an antidote in the Spring 2025 Editor’s Note of The Greensboro Review when he writes that the “magic of literature” is “its ability to dissolve the boundaries that separate us, revealing the common threads of fear, hope, and longing that connects us all.”
This newest issue features much to help us connect, including the Robert Watson Literary Prize winners: Jeni O’Neal’s “Loving a Man and His Kids and His House” in poetry and Emily Harper Ellis’s “The Fairy Swap” in fiction, as well as new work by Miriam Akervall, Megan Blankenship, Alex Bullock, Flora Field, Abigail Ham, Max Kruger-Dull, Seth Leeper, Angela Ma, Elisabeth Murawski, Michael O’Ryan, Leslie Pietrzyk, Caroline Porter, Lindsay Stewart, Zach Swiss, David Thoreen, Amber Train, and Andy Young.
In his poetry and collage hybrid Self Geofferential, Geoffrey Gatza is poetry’s equivalent of chief cook and bottle-washer. He created the book’s art, writing, design, typesetting, and cover. As he writes in the opening poem “Disappointment Apples”: “Under the unity of naming / I hoped to bridge the gap.” Gatza’s multifaceted artistic vision brings “a new light shining” on expansive and inventive possibilities.
That artistic possibility comes alive in the “gallant colorful celebrations” of his mixed media collages and the “strange melting shadows” of familial trauma stories. Gatza addresses the “biggest littlest sadness” of his childhood by rewriting fables such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Tortoise and the Hare.” Reimagining these stories offers Gatza a medium for a do-over where he can stand up to the abusive parents, “hateful” brothers, and “smug” sisters who did him wrong in his early life. By doing so in art, the “broken story is dragged upwards,” and Gatza salvages painful memories “to be made” into something new.
Gatza’s whimsical collages beautifully complement his self-reflective and tender-hearted poems. The poems make room for a “Birthday Girl” who is a “ruthless schemer,” a friend John who “was trouble,” those “wrongfully convicted suffering in jail,” Emily Dickinson, Clarice the cat, and all “Of those who have come before us and serve as markers of who we are / As people on this strange planet wondering what it is that we are all doing / Here.”
One thing Geoffrey Gatza does while here is celebrate “growing” and making. The reader finds him in the garden with primrose, and “in the kitchen cooking / Using up the bruised peaches for a summertime cobbler.”
Self Geofferential is fresh out of Geoffrey Gatza’s imagination. “Looking for the jointure,” between publisher and artist, collage and poetry, the past and present, the fractured and flourishing, Geoffrey Gatza emerges as a “champion of broken art.”
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
The Malahat Review 230 features winners of the 2025 Open Season Awards as well as interviews with the authors. Creative Nonfiction Winner: “Singularity Packet” by Tanis MacDonald; Poetry Winner: “Anxiety Attack” by Georgio Russell; Fiction Winner “Bubble Bath and the Ecstasy of Diminishing” by Catherine St. Denis.
Also included in this issue is new poetry by Lucas Crawford, Jannie Stafford Edwards, Jonathan Focht, Michael Goodfellow, Grace, Patrick Grace, Umma Habiba, Danielle Hubbard, PW Jarungpiterah, Barbara Bruhin Kenney, Timothy Liu, Rebecca Lawrence Lynch, Sadie McCarney, Gerald Arthur Moore, Jonathan Moskaluk, Maureen Paxton, Hannah Polinski, Emily Riddle, Jay Ritchie, Spenser Smith, Gordon Taylor, Claudia Yang; fiction by H Felix Chau Bradley, Olga Campofreda, K. S. M.; and creative nonfiction by Alana Friend Lettner, and Sina Queyras.
AGNI101 is inhabited by gravity and grace in counterpoise, from the cover and art feature by Palestinian painter Malak Mattar to the essays, poems, and stories, the inescapable world finds its match in soaring gestures of imagination. In fiction, the characters of Silja Liv Kelleris, Alp Türkol, and Haytham el-Wardany (trans. Katharine Halls) give terrible circumstances a powerful second shape. Speakers in poems by Kazim Ali, CooXooEii Black, Amy Beeder, Hera Naguib, and Robert Pinsky gaze unflinchingly to counter the sturdiest myths. And in essays, Graison Gill, Brandi Bird, and Angela Pelster — among many others — invite readers into truths more complicated than the surface suggests. Available for purchase in single issue and subscription, AGNI also publishes unique online content readers can access for free.
The Spring 2025 issue of Baltimore Review is now available online for readers to enjoy, with creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry by Hannah Keziah Agustin, Stephanie J. Andersen, Nicholas Barnes, Merrill Oliver Douglas, Jake Bienvenue, Kimberly Gibson-Tran, Erik Harper Klass, Andrea Lewis, Ron MacLean, Hila Ratzabi, Jemma Leigh Roe, Daniel J. Rortvedt, L. Soviero, Kelly Terwilliger, and Qiwen Xiao.
Published since 1996 as print journal and re-launched as an online, quarterly journal in 2012, work accepted for online publication in Baltimore Review is also collected for annual print issues. The journal features the work of Baltimore-area writers, as well as writers from around the world.
Clarity Press titles have appeared on university course lists, won major human rights awards, been endorsed by high UN and government officials, Pulitzer and Nobel Peace Prize winners, and Hollywood and other activist icons. Over 100 have been translated into 16 different languages. See flyer for new releases and visit our website to find out more.
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Application Deadline: May 15/June 1 Realize your vision with acclaimed novelist, memoirist, editor Kate Moses, as invested in your story & your growth as you are. Taking writers under her wing for 3 decades. Recent mentees have won Pushcart Prize, Narrative Prize, Independent Book Publishers Association Medal, finalists for Greywolf Nonfiction Prize, Next Generation Indie Book Award. Substack: The Museletter with Kate Moses. View flyer or visit website to learn more.
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Deadline: June 15, 2025 The Catamaran Poetry Prize is open to West Coast poets living in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii. A prize of $1,000 and publication in book form will be awarded. Submit here. The 2025 Catamaran poetry prize judge is Mary Szybist. Mary Szybist is most recently the author of Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry. View flyer for more information.
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Deadline: June 15, 2025 Submit your 25–40-page flash fiction chapbook to Boudin (the spicy online cousin of The McNeese Review)! Winner will receive $1,000, 25 author copies, an author-signing at AWP 2026, inclusion in The McNeese Review 2026, etc. Final Judge: Roxane Gay. Distributed by TRP: The University Press of SHSU. See our flyer and submit here!
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Hidden Timber Books publishes stories that speak to historical, and cultural, experiences of past and present. Check out our new releases: books that tap into life in rural Wisconsin, loss and resilience as seen through “candor, humor, and clarity,” and a novel about a family navigating the racism of past and present St. Louis. View flyer & visit our website for more information.
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Deadline: June 15, 2025 For the 2025 Tusculum Review Fiction Chapbook Prize, Gordo author Jaime Cortez will select one story for this three-part award: a prize of $1,500, publication of the story in The Tusculum Review’s 21st volume (2025), and creation of a stand-alone chapbook with original art. The winning author will be celebrated at our live chapbook launch. See our flyer and website for guidelines and past contest winners, publications, and events.
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The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors become members to: keep up with changes in the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing, gain greater visibility for their writing, join a group of like-minded people who love writing. View our flyer to see new releases by members and a link to our website.
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Where do you live?, Poetry by Dr. Hanaa Ahmad and Jennifer Jean Arrowsmith Press, May 2025
In Where do you live?, Jennifer Jean and Hanaa Ahmad Jabr follow the great tradition of epistolary poetry. The poets, in different cultural circumstances, inflected over a great planetary arch from Mosul to Massachusetts, speak to each other, and us, about the stories that nurture, and the damage caused by the fantasts of power; of the pincered peril and the anxious peace of empire; of the hoped-for serenity and call to duty of neighborhoods, children and apricot trees; of myths and movies. In Jean’s words, “like love, music is perfectly untranslatable — / it gathers us together.” And in Jabr’s words, since poetry “introduced me to myself,” in these poems readers can be gathered and introduced to their widest selves. A beautiful rumination, with exquisite translations by Wadaq Qais and Tamara Al-Attiya, on soft and hard power, and on what it’s like to live with the yearning for home, whether you’re there or not.
Those living in the U.S. know Memorial Day, which is approaching soon, is meant to honor and mourn military personnel who died in service. It’s an important day of remembrance—but like many important days, it’s become commercialized as the unofficial start of summer and long weekends. That alone is good fodder for writing, isn’t it? A social loss of something sacred reduced to a day off and a barbecue.
But what is your own personal Memorial Day?
Not the holiday itself, but a day in your year—or a weekend, or a week—that holds deep meaning. Was it the day you finally took the leap and left the place you hated to do what you loved? What era did that mark in your personal history? Was it the best thing to happen to you? Or not quite what you imagined it to be?
Or perhaps it was a profound loss. How do you celebrate what was lost while mourning the fact that it’s gone? How do you honor its place in your life?
Grab your pen and start writing. Let it be sloppy, messy, riddled with mistakes—because all that matters is you are writing. And maybe, just maybe, you can find the strength to talk of things that always felt out of reach.
Time Marches On
Somehow May is half over with—didn’t it just begin? I know, I know, enough with the flying-time jokes, but they never seem to get old. Time always seems to speed up when we want it to slow down and drag when we wish it would fly. It’s Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in action—or at least, that’s how it feels.
While time marches on to the beat of its drum (which never seems steady enough for us), we march on too. Let’s keep submission goals going strong, shall we?
Sarah Ogilvie once worked for the Oxford English Dictionary, so she brings first-hand knowledge to her book. However, the strongest part of this work is her in-depth research — eight years in the making — to find the stories of so many people who contributed to the greatest dictionary in the English language. While some readers will be familiar with Simon Winchester’s book The Professor and the Madman (The Surgeon of Crawthorne in the UK), Ogilvie goes well beyond that to include hundreds of contributors, though there is a chapter on other contributors who spent time in mental institutions.
Ogilvie orders the book alphabetically, with subjects including H for Hopeless Contributors, K for Kleptomaniac; P for Pornographer; and V for Vicars (and Vegetarians). Through this approach, she reveals the breadth of people who shared their time and energy and (sometimes) expertise by collecting words for the OED. The only drawback to the book, in fact, is that these categories are arbitrary, at best, and constraining, at worst. However, that drawback is minor, as Ogilvie clearly needed an organizing principle to contain the multitudes who sent words to the OED, and this structure is as good as any to do so.
The book’s main strength, then, is the breadth of stories that Ogilvie was able to uncover. Using James Murray’s address book as a main source, Ogilvie tracks down the lost stories of people from all classes and all backgrounds, especially those on the margins of society, who helped create this mammoth work. She reminds readers that it was a true work of democracy, though Murray and the other editors were ultimately in charge; the dictionary simply wouldn’t exist without all of the contributors. Also, for word lovers, Ogilvie includes an array of words included in the dictionary that are there only because of the work of one person.
Because of her focus on the everyday people, Ogilvie reminds readers of what a society can accomplish when people come together. That’s a message that goes beyond the OED and one that goes beyond words themselves, especially in a world that’s so deeply divided.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
Application Deadline: May 15, 2025 Applications are open for the third annual Tremont Writers Conference, taking place this October inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Join renowned authors Crystal Wilkinson, David Joy, Karen Spears Zacharias, and Maurice Manning for an intensive five-day retreat for writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Financial aid is available. Learn more and apply at our website.
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It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays by Tom McAllister Rose Metal Press, May 2025
In this meditative and lyrical collection, Tom McAllister challenges himself to write a short essay for every year he’s been alive. With each piece strictly limited to a maximum of 1,500 words, these 42 essays move fluidly through time, taking poetic leaps and ending up in places the reader does not expect. Funny, insightful, and open-hearted, It All Felt Impossible aims to tell the story of McAllister’s life through brief glimpses, anecdotes, and fragments that radiate outward and grapple with his place in the culture at large.
In the span of these essays, McAllister witnesses a monorail crash at a zoo, survives a tornado, plays youth sports for tyrannical coaches, grieves for dead parents, learns how to ride a bike as an adult, works long shifts making cheesesteaks, and more. Each annual offering is a search for meaning and connection, chronicled by an engaging and honest voice.
When Maureen Stanton’s boyfriend, Steve, at 29, was diagnosed with cancer, they embarked on an all-out effort to save his life. Meanwhile, Steve’s childhood friend, Joey, a drug addict, sold Steve’s pain medication to pay for Steve’s experimental treatments. This beautiful and aching memoir is an odyssey through the difficult but exquisite terrain of love—romantic, brotherly, spiritual—in the face of mortality.
Winner of the Donald Jordan prize for Literary Excellence, the Sewanee Review nonfiction prize, and featured in New York Times “Modern Love” column, The Murmur of Everything Moving is a riveting memoir of love, loss, and longing. Novelist, Stephen Kiernan, who judged the DLJ contest, called it “beguiling, vivid, rich with loving devotion… a wonder of a book.” Andre Dubus III called it “a love song and tribute, a hymn of praise for each sacred moment given us … heartbreakingly beautiful.”
Publisher’s Weekly Booklife “Editor’s Pick” — “a stunning, true romance … a cinematic, powerful memoir of caregiving.”
Kirkus Reviews — “A poignant, evocative story of love, death, and survival. Stanton is a skilled writer whose prose sparkles with literary panache.”
Maureen Stanton is the author of three award-winning nonfiction books. Recognition for her writing includes the Iowa Review Award, The American Literary Review Award, The Sewanee Review award, Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony.
Are you having trouble establishing that writing routine you know will help you thrive as a writer? Proliffic can help with that. Designed for writers of all levels, Proliffic helps you get into that consistent writing practice with daily writing prompts and a minimalist interface that keeps you coming back. Not because you have to, but because you want to.
Every day is an invitation to write something, with a fresh prompt to spark your creativity. Engage with the prompt or use it loosely to find a starting point. Write as much or as little as you want. Today you might find the ideas come easily, tomorrow it might be a bit of a grind.
Ultimately, the consistency will pay off in honing your craft, while building a treasure trove of story ideas.
You’ll get to read how others responded to the same prompt; turning writing into a shared, inspiring experience. Proliffic’s built-in calendar makes it easy to track your progress and revisit past pieces. It’s your personal habit tracker, archive, and creative space all in one.
No judgement. Just a simple, sustainable way to write often, write more and write better.
Crunchwrap Truth, Poetry by Kevin J.B. O’Connor Bottlecap Press, May 2025
Crunchwrap Truth by Kevin J.B. O’Connor is a chapbook of absurdist political-food poems, inspired by the regal concoction from which it borrows its title. In existential poetry that probes the meaning of American citizenship in a post-capitalist and post-truth society, O’Connor constructs and conveys a peculiar moment in Western history. Inspired by the New York School and confessional/post-confessional approaches to narrating post-modernity, the author romps through a series of linked verse that is a delightful, page-turning experience to read. The book is available now from Bottlecap Press.
The May 2025 issue of The Lake, journal of poetry and poetics, is now online featuring Aman Alam, Nick Allen, Emma Atkins, Melanie Branton, Marianne Brems, C. B. Crenshaw, Craig Dobson, Kaily Dorfman, Sameen Ejaz, Annette Gagliardi, Judith Taylor, Kim Waters. Readers can also dig into Charles Rammelkamp’s review of Helen Ivory’s new full-length poetry collection, Constructing a Witch, and a review of J. R. Solonche’s Old by David Mark Williams. The Lake also has the unique feature “One Poem Reviews,” in which authors share a poem from a recently published collection. The May 2025 feature spotlights works by Alex Barr, Dennis Maulsby, and M. Kelly Peach.
In January 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns went into effect, Dr. Melody Glenn took a part-time job at a methadone clinic in Tucson, Arizona. What she found was both appalling and frustrating. First, there was the staff’s condescension toward patients, all of whom were forced to wait in line to get a single dose of a drug that was meant to keep them from using heroin or other opioids. Then there were the periodic tox screenings and the mandatory supervision of patients who resented the constant oversight. Add in the public’s frequently-expressed apprehension about allowing a clinic for people who use drugs to exist in their communities, and it’s easy to see how and why staff burn out and become discouraged.
And it is not just methadone: According to Glenn, a similar reaction surrounds buprenorphine, a less-stringently regulated drug that also helps people reduce opioid dependency. As she began to probe the scorn surrounding these drugs, Glenn learned of Dr. Marie Nyswander, a once-prominent, if always controversial, New York physician who is credited with creating methadone. The unfolding story chronicles Nyswander’s complicated life – she was overtly critical of feminism despite being a pioneer in a largely male world – and reveals the many factors that have made – and continue to make – providing compassionate care to drug users difficult to sustain.
Glenn is a forceful advocate of harm reduction, and Mother of Methadone advocates a range of ways that the medical and social justice worlds can work together to create safe injection sites, distribute clean syringes and fentanyl test strips, and promote the use of Naloxone to reverse overdoses and prevent needless death. What’s more, the book offers a sensitive and progressive vision of medical care and presents a cogent argument against the continued criminalization of drug use.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
Editor’s Note: This review was removed at the request of the publisher since final copy of the book was not yet available. Readers can visit the publisher’s website here to read more about the book.
Meditations: The Assorted Prose of Barbara Guest, Edited by Joseph Shafer Wesleyan University Press, May 2025
Meditations gathers together in one volume for the first time an extensive collection of the prose work of Barbara Guest (1920–2006), one of the major voices of twentieth century American literature. Known primarily as a poet, Guest worked in many styles, all represented herein: essays, lectures, art criticism, literary and art reviews, as well as forms of fiction, biography, poetic prose, drama, comics, and other mixed-genre pieces. This collection of the poet’s prose illuminates Guest’s singular genius, highlighting her structural awareness of language and placing her within the vanguard of American poetry. Much of her writing initially appeared in special editions, often through collaborations with visual artists. Lyrical and intellectually soaring, this collection is a treasure of insights into the relationship between language, image, and imagination. Joseph Shafer’s introduction provides a meaningful context for sixty years’ worth of critical and creative prose by one of America’s finest poets.
61 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
The first full week of May is nearly over. The weather still can’t make up its mind if it wants to be warm or cold, but they we have warmer weather on the way for the weekend. If you have lovely weather forecast, pack up your laptop, head outdoors, and let NewPages help you with your submission goals while you soak up the sunshine (make sure to wear sunscreen!).
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Announcing Wordrunner eChapbooks‘ 15th anniversary issue: Disturbances is available to read online or as a downloadable printable PDF. Wordrunner eChapbooks is a hybrid of online literary journal and chapbook collections. Their 2025 anthology and 54th issue issue marks the 15th anniversary of their opening this journal to public submission. Although no theme was announced for this anthology, many of the stories and poems are connected by disturbances small and large — whether endured by troubled adolescents, bereaved mourners, day laborers, boxers or struggling writers (including Mary Shelley).
Wordrunner eChapbook’s Editor’s Choice for this issue is “Minder Root” by Stan Kempton, a haunting tale set in a timeless rural South. Other contributors include fiction by Jim Beane, Ed Davis, Frank Diamond, Stan Kempton, Joseph Kierland and Don J Taylor; nonfiction by Jane Boch, Ann Calandro, David Hawdbawnik and Melanie S. Smith; and poetry by GTimothy Gordon, Peter Grieco, Ted Morrissey and Pamela Wynn.
Last year, Wordrunner eChapbook’s began publishing micro fiction and creative nonfiction. Their Micro Issue 2 went online January 2025. Submissions open again September 2025.
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 31st issue features poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from contributors around the globe. Accomplished, well-established authors are published — side by side — with fresh, emerging voices. Readers are provided with a powerful, focused literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. Always free to access, and always free from advertising, discover what over 150,000 readers in 150 countries, and over 1,000 contributors from 54 countries, already know; the finest new writing can be found where the desert meets the mountains.
The MacGuffin April 2025 issue sold out at the 2025 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (!) but is now available again for individual purchase — whew! This hot issue features winners of Poet Hunt 29 with commentary by Judge Michael Meyerhofer as well as a look ahead to this year’s Poet Hunt 30 including a mini-feature of poems by Judge Darrel Alejandro Holnes. The issue rounds out with a quadruplet of short memoirs; fiction selections including Margaret Willey’s family drama — as turbulent as the lake it’s set on, and Angela Townsend’s “Present Lives,” whose main character invites readers to ‘tune in, turn on,’ referencing enhanced spirituality. All of this wrapped neatly within Jennifer Rodrigues’s compelling cover art, “Switch Plate.”
Curated by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions author Simona Carini, Sheila-Na-Gig online’s spring 2025 issue is now available. This volume contains work by Editors’ Choice Award winner Vincent Caseragola along with 44 other new and returning contributors.
Started in 1990, Sheila-Na-Gig continues its mission, “to support the work of both established and emerging writers in a crisp, uncluttered space online and through the publication of individual collections and anthologies from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.”
Medieval English historian Dan Jones dramatically delivers with Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King. After broader books covering the Knights Templar, the three-century Plantagenet dynasty, and the thirty-year Wars of the Roses which led to that dynasty’s end, Jones’s first biography impresses with its depth and research. The narrative draws readers into the life and times of one of the most celebrated Medieval kings.
Though Henry doesn’t become king until around the halfway mark, Jones maintains tension by foreshadowing dramatic events like Henry’s near-death at sixteen from an arrow fired at the Battle of Shrewsbury. Writing in present tense throughout, readers get young Henry’s view of his relative, and godfather, Richard II’s famous tyranny and subsequent deposition by Henry’s father. While carefully undermining certain famous characterizations, Jones recounts Henry’s maturation from the son of a Duke not in line for the throne, to warrior prince and heir, and finally to glorious king and conqueror.
The violence common in medieval histories plays a prominent role in Henry’s military accomplishments. Exploitation of civil war in France allowed Henry’s invasion and subsequent great victories at Agincourt and Harfleur, but also led to civilian horrors. Jones is clear-eyed about the “greatness” of medieval kingship impressing us less today and includes Henry’s many faults according to modern standards. Still, though sensitive readers should pass, lovers of the genre will find it a satisfying addition. Henry V lived a dramatic thirty-five years, dying at the height of his power, and Jones tells the tale with style.
Aiden Hunt is a writer, editor, and literary critic based in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. He is the creator, editor, and publisher of the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, and his reviews have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Fugue, The Rumpus, Jacket2, and The Adroit Journal, among other venues.
The subtitle of A. Kendra Greene’s collection, No Less Strange or Wonderful, is “essays in curiosity,” an apt way to sum up this work. In essays ranging from one to thirty pages, often with illustrations Greene has either drawn or uncovered from books from the past four hundred years or so, Greene lets her curiosity run throughout the natural world.
In one essay, “Megalonyx Jeffersonii,” she writes about dressing up a model of a giant sloth, which leads to reflections on the debate in gender identification of such a species when there’s not enough evidence to determine a clear answer. Though Greene doesn’t make an explicit connection to the current debates about how one determines gender, it’s difficult to read this essay without thinking about that echo.
Greene also explores cultures most of us aren’t aware of, such as balloon twisters, which goes well beyond birthday party clowns. Greene volunteers as a model for Laura, who uses balloons to recreate the iconic Marilyn Monroe dress from The Seven Year Itch. While attending the convention where Laura crafts the dress from balloons, Greene meditates on balloon twisting as a symbolic art — “A balloon sculpture is always, obviously, made of balloons. And yet it is always, obviously, more than that.” — as well as personal space. She points out how willing people were to touch her balloons in ways that are inappropriate otherwise, with one man putting his hand on a balloon representing her breast.
As with all good essays in the tradition of Montaigne, the seeming focus of Greene’s essays is both subject and springboard for meditations on what it means to move through this world, both natural and human-created. Her curiosity leads her to places many writers never arrive.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
55 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Welcome to the first submissions roundup for May 2025. The year keeps inching…or rocketing closer to being half over with and NewPages is still here to help you keep your submission goals going strong!
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
You don’t need running shoes for The Poetry Marathon, an annual, online event focused on generating new work within a set timeline. The challenge is to write 12 poems in 12 hours (a half marathon) or 24 poems in 24 hours (a full marathon) at the rate of one poem per hour.
This free, international event draws hundreds of poets from around the world, and like any endurance challenge, it takes true commitment and perseverance. Do you have what it takes?
This year’s marathon will start at 9AM ET on May 17 and end at either 9PM ET (half) or at 9AM ET on May 18 (full). Half Marathon participants can also choose to start at 9PM ET on May 17 and take the overnight shift until 9AM ET. The organizers post optional prompts on the hour, and participants can post their poems immediately, or, if having all-day online access isn’t feasible, the poems can be written on the hour but posted to the community later.
The event will be hosted in a private, member-only space on Circle, a community platform that allows participants to read and respond to one another’s works.
The Spring 2025 issue of The Missouri Review (Sprint 2025) is themed “Outsiders” and includes the winners of the 2024 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, plus debut fiction by Jeffery Brady, new fiction by Phuong Anh Le, William Torrey, Drew Calvert, and Mark Labowskie. New poetry from Rebe Huntman, Liane Strauss, and Amanda Gunn, and new essays by Sarah Mullens and Justin Thurman. Also, an art feature on James Ensore, and a new “Curio Cabinet” on Theda Bara, and a omnibus review of four novels about becoming a mother by Cynthia Miller Coffel.
This is also the first issue that will be available worldwide on Project MUSE via Open Access here.
In a world that can feel overrun with digital content, print still holds its own and can, in fact, provide some much-needed relief from tech fatigue. This can be especially important for young people, which is where Tween Magazine shines like a beacon in the night. “As parents learn the negative effects of social media and devices, they are returning to more traditional media,” says Founding Editor and Creative Director Mary Flenner. “Tween Magazine offers girls a screen-free chance to engage, learn life skills, build confidence, and find inspiration.”
Tween girls are those in that “in between” stage of life, the preteen years where they are leaving childhood and entering adolescence. “We aim to fill the content void for young girls 8 to 12 who have outgrown children’s magazines but aren’t ready for the mature content in teen magazines,” explains Flenner.
When the famous novelist Mira Wallacz goes missing at the festival devoted to celebrating her work, the attendees assume the worst—and some hope for the worst. Ten years after the festival, Geneva Finch, an ideal reader, sets out to discover the truth about what happened to Mira Wallacz. A twisty literary mystery dealing with duplicity, envy, betrayal, and love between an entertainment agent and a self-deprecating former priest, Wrongful explores the many ways we can get everything wrong, time and again, even after we’re certain we discovered the truth.
In For Today, Carolyn Hembree chronicles the life of a woman navigating the challenges of the sandwich generation — simultaneously caring for her aging father and nurturing her young daughter. Throughout the first quarter of the collection, Hembree draws upon traditional forms such as the sonnet crown, villanelle, and haiku to explore the nature of responsibility and the complex interplay of time. Those poetic structures invite readers to consider how form reflects the weight and nuances of modern life’s emotional “cargo.” The poet poses a compelling question: What form can truly encapsulate the pressures of living amid competing demands? The poet’s answer takes shape in a dynamic, en plein air-style walking poem that maps the tender and evolving relationship between the woman and her daughter, all set against the culturally rich backdrop of their New Orleans neighborhood.
The title poem, spanning sixty-one pages and comprising the collection’s remaining three-quarters, immerses readers in a near real-time narrative detailing the woman’s dynamic internal and external experiences. Here, we witness mother and daughter as they stroll their vibrant neighborhood, play an I-Spy-like game, and delight in the small details of life. The mother’s thoughts also wander to weighty concerns, such as an ill friend, climate disasters, and lockdown drills. Memories of her father merge with reflections on influential poets, like Inger Christensen and Rainer Maria Rilke, prompting her own poetic inquiry and responsiveness.
This expansive poem resists controlling containment and neat endings, instead insisting on a journey that allows tangents and moves “onward.” The poem embraces the totality of existence, affirming that every experience holds significance and deserves recognition. By doing so, the poem “sings exultant,” showing “poetry’s long tongue / licking life’s contours” of love and grief. Hembree’s desire “to touch everything, at once” is an acknowledgment of the intricate beauty of life. For Today reminds us that in the tapestry of life, every thread matters.
For Today by Carolyn Hembree. Louisiana State University Press, January 2024.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
65 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Welcome to the final submissions roundup for the month of April! Time keeps marching on and NewPages is here to help you march on with your submission goals. Weather seems to be taking a turn for the better, so if you are finally able to enjoy sunshine and warmer temperatures, take your laptop outside and soak up the sun while working on your writing, editing, and submitting.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
A name like Silly Goose Press can’t help but attract such comments as “Have you seen that egg?!” or “What a honking good time they are to be around!” which the editors would take as high praise, along with recognition for knowing how to use an Oxford comma. Puns (mostly) aside, Silly Goose Press is a new, online magazine publishing poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, art, and photography roughly every four months. Readers can enjoy accessing each piece individually online or via PDF which can be downloaded – all for free.
Silly Goose Press was inspired when the editors attended their first AWP conference. “We are best friends who love flocking together,” says Editor-in-Chief Rhiannon Fisher, “just a group of silly geese and always have been. The publication name is an inside joke amongst writing friends that has evolved into something magical.” After the conference, Fisher says, “We challenged ourselves to expand our knowledge of and place in the literary world. We wanted to be a part of something bigger than our individual literary careers, make friends, and build community. Also, now we are legally bound to maintain a friendship.”
In his debut, award-winning collection, Book of Kin, Darius Atefat-Peckham explores the “haunting” intersections of his life as an “only child of grief” with a mother he describes as someone “who will die, many times, over” in life and imagination. Atefat-Peckham’s poems are infused with “[hush] music” that oscillates between “breaking” and “accumulation.” His poem “They Wake Me” poignantly asks, “How many beloveds in me will I survive?” This unveils the dialogue between the poet and the fragments of self that emerge from grief. Both poet and son “want / To see what, at the tongue of a cracked bell, survives.”
Book of Kin has three sections: “The First Sound,” “Book of Kin,” and “The Outer Reaches.” Each section seeks kinship with the mother and brother Atefat-Peckham lost in a car accident, his Iranian heritage and language, his artistic life and “perennial living.”
Atefat-Peckham’s poetry is arresting, self-aware. The narrative and emotion in the poems are intricately tied to formal choices. For example, in the poem “Heathcliffs,” the poet often makes line breaks on words with glottal-stopped consonants, such as “lost,” “meant,” “wait,” “night,” and “want.” This end-word consonance creates a repeated plosive sound, evoking themes of fragility and mortality. Right-justified poems convey the “staggering” loss of family members. Concrete poems shaped like portholes offer an “ethereal lens” to other realms of consciousness. Bracketed words within poems connect to reveal additional meanings and new perspectives.
Each line of Atefat-Peckham’s poetry is wrought with celebration and sorrow, a combination reminiscent of both the poetry of Rumi and Susan Atefat-Peckham, the poet’s mother. Book of Kin serves as both a mourning ritual and a celebratory hymn, “teaching” readers “something about worship” while inviting us into an intimate conversation between spiritual, physical, and artistic realms.
Book of Kin by Darius Atefat-Peckham. Autumn House Press, October 2024. Winner of the 2023 Autumn House Poetry Prize as selected by January Gill O’Neil.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
Inspired by a post-dinner conversation in 1988, Thema offers writers a target theme to inspire poetry, stories, art, and photography. While the premise does not have to be a central element, it also cannot be “merely incidental.” Walking that fine line in this newest Spring 2025 issue with the theme “My Favorite Bookmark” are contributors Tytti Heikkinen, Cheryl Matthis, Casey Lawrence, Judy Penz Sheluk, Cezanne Waid, Sunayna Pal, Jill Munro, Elizabeth Raum, Pamela Hobart Clark, Lynda Fox, Tom Schmidt, Linda Berry, Matthew J. Spireng, Lynda Fox, Frank Markover, Allan Lake, Orman Day, James B. Nicola, Stacey Alderman, and Kathleen Gunton, with cover artwork by Aria Marotta.
Forthcoming themes include “I Wish I’d Said That,” “Today’s Onerous Task,” and “While the Snowstorm Was Raging…” Visit Thema‘s website for submission information and deadlines. Thema does accept previous published works that fit the theme.
In You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty, longtime anti-poverty activist and Presbyterian pastor, Liz Theoharis, a veteran of the welfare rights movement and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, and writer-organizer Noam Sandweiss-Back, have written a powerful denunciation of the established truism that tells us that “the poor will always be with us.” Instead, the pair offer a detailed and often-poignant look at the ways poor people have, for many decades, mobilized on their own behalf to win respect and demand access to high-quality public education, healthcare, affordable housing, and other family supports. The book, part memoir, part polemic, part theological discussion, and part policy guide, zeroes in on wide-ranging organizing efforts and charts strategies, tactics, and goals used in grassroots campaigns. While not every effort they present was successful, the lessons learned make the book an essential primer for anyone working for progressive political change.
That said, while there are no formulas for movement building, Theoharis and Sandweiss-Back believe that anti-poverty efforts should mobilize around human rights and demand political, civil, and economic equity. Moreover, the book argues that all three are necessary components of human dignity – or should be. They also favor multi-issue campaigns, writing that it is imperative to integrate the “fight for food, water, clothing, housing, health care, and good jobs…Our power rests not in any one issue but in the multiplicity of our demands and communities coming together.” Finally, the authors remind readers of the necessity of hope. As they conclude, “successful movements never just curse the darkness; they offer new ways of illuminating the future.”
They are wise words. And despite the fact that the Right is currently ascendant, neither Theoharis nor Sandweiss-Back seems discouraged. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress,” they conclude. Time will tell how this will play out.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
Thorn & Bloom: A Bold New Literary Magazine Cultivating Self-Care as Resistance Published by redrosethorns Ltd. Liability Co., March 2025
Thorn & Bloom is a quarterly literary magazine that reimagines self-care as an act of resistance, reclamation, and radical honesty. Through a curated collection of essays, poetry, fiction, and expert insight, the magazine explores personal healing as a catalyst for collective liberation.
Launched last month, the debut issue features a diverse range of emerging and established voices who offer grounded self-care practices, challenge internalized narratives, and illuminate the social conditioning that distances us from our authentic selves. Thorn & Bloom brings a fresh voice to the literary landscape—one that dares to treat self-care not as luxury or aesthetic, but as essential, intentional, and deeply political. The magazine is rooted in a commitment to inclusivity, empowerment, and truth-telling, offering a platform for stories that are both tender and transformative; inviting readers to embrace storytelling as a healing practice and self-care as a radical path to liberation.
The April 2025 issue of Plume (164) features works by Tiana Nobile, Marilyn A. Johnson, Olga Maslova, Jen Karetnick, Dai Weina, Phillis Levin, Harry Martinson, Daniel Tobin, Doug Anderson, Carol Muske-Dukes, and Jean Nordhaus, a conversation with Phillis Levin by Frances Richey, a review of Virginia Konchan’s Requiem by Heather Treseler, and commentary from this issue’s contributors.
On one level, the title of Pico Iyer’s latest book, Aflame, refers to the wildfires in California that have taken at least one of his family’s homes and threatens the Hermitage, a monastery he visits quite often for solitude. On another, though, it describes the monks and other seekers of solitude he meets at the Hermitage over the more than three decades he’s been visiting, as they are alive in a way he doesn’t see in many people.
Iyer’s work is not concerned with chronology, as he doesn’t provide the readers with specific dates or times of his visits. Instead, as one might expect from a meditation on silence and solitude, he isn’t concerned with the way the world moves outside of the Hermitage. In fact, he says little about his life when he’s traveling for work or home with his wife and children, referencing them from time to time, but centering his thoughts on the monastery and the interactions he has there.
He presents the monks and other seekers as human, not saints, all wanting only to learn from a retreat from the concerns of the world. Iyer himself spends much of his time reflecting on what he’s reading, but, also, somewhat ironically, talking with the other people who are there. He develops deep friendships, intimacy that develops from sharing the solitude as much from those conversations.
The Hermitage is always in danger of being destroyed or even lacking the funds to continue, but the monks don’t seem that concerned. They know, and Iyer learns, that the lessons they’ve all learned will follow them elsewhere, should they have to leave. Iyer ultimately understands that, while he needs solitude, he can see the world differently no matter where he is, if he only continues to pay attention.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
In her debut collection, The Dove That Didn’t Return, Yael S. Hacohen delivers a poignant exploration of her lived experiences as a female commander in the Israeli Defense Forces from the front lines of the Middle East conflict. Hacohen’s poems scrutinize the nature of warfare, interrogate the concepts of violence and peace, navigate “a different shade / of Judaism,” and traverse the fine line between humanity and brutality to highlight the “constellations of combat” endured by both soldiers and civilians.
In the genre of war poetry often dominated by male voices, The Dove That Didn’t Return stands out by presenting the unique perspective of a female soldier who has “shot an M-16.” Hacohen weaves her personal experiences of military service with biblical and rabbinic themes, framing her reality as she seeks her “own olive tree… own truth, / …own kind of country.”
Many of the poems reimagine biblical narratives. “Pillar of Cloud” reflects on the fears surrounding military service, and “Moriah,” a conversation with Isaac, raises questions about sacrifice. “The Western Wall” contemplates whether the wall is merely “a wall, / nothing more,” a place to “bang… [a] head,” or a site of prayer.
The collection’s title references the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, where the dove bearing an olive branch typically symbolizes peace and hope. However, in the title poem, Hacohen critically reflects on the meaning behind the dove not returning, asking: What peace can exist in isolation? Who suffers from the consequences of war? This inquiry captures the complexities of striving for peace in an unstable region.
While grappling with the complexities of establishing a state in a land also home to others, Yael S. Hacohen’s narrative, declarative poems address the complex realities of family and duty, faith and sacrifice, war and peace without the pretense of easy resolution.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
The Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature, Blue Collar Review Winter 2024-25 opens with an editorial documenting the political state of our country in the context of a global history of dictatorships. Writing as witness, this issue documents the role of creative expression, “We know they are coming for us and we are as enraged as we are frightened. In typesetting this issue, we note a proliferation of expletives. Working class writing often evokes our class mood and these poets are pissed!”
Joining the paper protest in this issue are poets Dave Roskos, Dan Grote, Robert Cooperman, G.C. Compton, Darrell Petska, Cathy Porter, Fred Voss (R.I.P), Thot King, Andrew Slipp, Gregg Shotwell, Christopher Buckley, Gregg Shotwell, Dan Grote, Bill Mohr, R.M. Yager, Chris Butters, Manry Franke, Shirley Adelman (R.I.P.), Al Markowitz, Angelo Mesisco, Steweart Acuff, many more.
Visit the Blue Collar Review website for subscription info and sample poems from the newest issue.
Registration Deadline: June 1, 2025 Join us for the Aspen Summer Words Writers Conference June 22-27 in Snowmass Village, CO! Three different workshops to ignite your creativity. Generative Writing to prompt the writer in you. Book Branding for guiding authors through a successful launch and beyond. Readers Retreat for the book lover. A week full of panels, community and inspiration. All in a beautiful, rocky mountain location. Open flyer to scan QR Codes for more information.
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Deadline: Rolling Pictura Journal is open for submissions of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art. General submissions are always free, and expedited responses are available for a small fee. We pay $5 per contributor; issues are available online and in print. See our website and our flyer for guidelines and more info.
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Deadline: Rolling Stone Circle Review publishes a new poem every Saturday and Sunday on a website designed to foreground each poem on the page. We will respond within 28 days, and we make it as easy as possible to submit. We prefer poems containing striking imagery and language that are unexpected without being indecipherable. You will find more information at our website.
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.
