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NewPages Blog

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!

Magazine Stand :: Molecule – Issue 6

Molecule online literary and art magazine cover image

“A Tiny Lit Mag” – Molecule online journal publishes artwork and written works of 50 words or less, and their latest issue is proof that less can indeed be much more. The journal is packed with enough to satisfy readers until the next biannual issue comes out. Even though the entries are brief and can be quickly read, I found myself savoring in re-reading and the moments after reading when I just wanted to look away from the screen and allow the well-crafted work to resonate. This installment includes interviews with Cynthia Bargar and David Kirby, drama by Will Cordeiro, Ben Stanford, and Tony Targan, and art, prose, and poetry from many others, including Adebisi Amoriis, Shell Birdis, Karina Borowicz, MJ Bujold, Jeff Burt, Robin Cantwell, Dallas Crow, Steve DeMont, Doriane Feinstein, Mae Fraser, Jeff Gately, Emilia Getzingeris, Ellery Haney, Niki Hatzidis, Larissa Monique Hauck, Doug Holderis, Santosh Kalwar, Hilary King, Joe McGurn, Ariya Mamun, Ivan de Monbrison, Chad Parenteauhas, Palline Plum Remi Recchia, Fabio Sassi, Joel Savishinsky, Scott T. Starbuck, Bill Teitelbaum, Peter Urkowitz, and Allison Whittenberg.

New Book :: Receta

Receta by Mario José Pagán Morales book cover image

Receta
Poetry by Mario José Pagán Morales
great weather for MEDIA, April 2022

In this debut poetry collection, Mario José Pagán Morales explores the journeying of mind, spirit, and body to and from Puerto Rico and New York City. Boricua and part of a proud tradition of Nuyorican poets before and around him, Pagán balances a generous heart with striking and visceral imagery. The line breaks and movement between English and Spanglish are reflective of the poems’ settings: the constant journeying of mind, spirit, and body to and from Guayanilla and Ponce, Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and New York City. The Bronx. History amplifies the colonizer, but Morales invokes voices from the sites of struggle. Here, even the abandoned buildings and trash heaps speak of lives that matter(ed).

Where to Submit Round-up: April 21, 2022

April is officially over next week. So that means time to start looking ahead towards May and deadlines. Don’t forget to check out our full list of Writing Contests with May Deadlines.

Plus keep your submission goals going strong by checking out the opportunities featured in the NewPages Classifieds. Remember, newsletter subscribers get first glance at new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on the site, so subscribe today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: April 21, 2022”

Book Review :: You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy

You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

New York Times journalist Kate Murphy explores the many facets of listening: the physical, mental, and, most importantly, emotional. As her title implies, she points out the ways people have stopped listening to one another and the effects of that lack in our lives. She uses neuroscience to talk about how we sync with one another when we truly listen, as well as what we can learn from improvisational comedy about how to fully engage in a conversation. Murphy explores the loneliness that has crept into our lives due to a lack of feeling heard. That deficit can come from the assumptions one makes, the technology that distracts us, or the difference in how quickly our mind thinks of what to say and how slowly it processes what we hear. Thankfully, she also explores ways we don’t listen to ourselves, choosing the negative voices that override what we most need to hear, as well as times when we should stop listening to others who wish us nothing good. As we move into more face-to-face contact after the past two years, Murphy reminds us we should all work to be better listeners, so all of our lives will be richer.

You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy. Celadon Books, 2020.

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. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or  http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

Magazine Stand :: bioStories – April 2022

As we come out of this pandemic – or learn to live with the endemic – we lament that we may have ‘forgotten’ how to live more communally with others. bioStories is a wonderful way to keep ourselves in tune to the lives of others and how we interact both locally and globally. Publishing nonfiction prose only, bioStories offers submission guidelines that help writers focus their craft on what the editors are looking for, and express the understanding that “real life is messy,” yet acknowledge: “human nature is idiosyncratic and frequently contradictory, and, quite often, when you look close enough, it is downright graceful.” The publication features a weekly essay on its homepage and prints two issues each year. Recent online contributions include Neil Cawley “Speech and Debate in the Time of Covid,“ Al Czarnowsky “Buck,“ Nancy Deyo “Naked Facebook Friday,“ William Keiser “A Postcard from the End,“ Jae Nolan “Better Left Unsaid,“ Kristen Ott Hogan “Give that Dog a Bone,“ Gretchen Roselli “Aunt Aggie, Bobby Kennedy, and My Parents’ Summer Theater,“ Nancy Smith Harris “Ida Ziegler,“ Aminah Wells “The Ballet Barre.“ and Andrew Yim “Grammy’s Secret.“

New Book :: This Long Winter

This Long Winter poetry by Joyce Sutphen book cover image

This Long Winter
Poetry by Joyce Sutphen
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

This Long Winter contains meditations on life in the rural world: reflections on hard work, aging, and the ravages of time — erasures that Sutphen attempts to ameliorate with her careful attention to language. These poems move us from delight in precise description to wisdom and solace in the things of this world. These modern metaphysical poems are rooted in a love that calls to the things of this world (to steal a line from Richard Wilbur). Noticing its details, the snowflakes, clementines, the lilies, the cardinal’s call, is the key for this momentary stay against time that comes at us in a rush. The many mirror images in these poems of the poet in a window looking out but simultaneously reflecting back point to the complexity and hard, loving work of really living in the world.

New Book :: Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt

Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt by Laurie Rachkus Uttich book cover image

Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt
Poetry by Laurie Rachkus Uttich
Riot in Your Throat Press, May 2022

This collection of poems takes the reader on a journey through life as a woman breaking free from the constraints of a quiet, midwestern life, to fighting battles for equality, to raising boys in a harsh society, to teaching students and making connections in an unjust world. Uttich teaches at the University of Central Florida and also leads creative writing workshops at a men’s maximum-security correctional facility, bringing her collective experience to offer readers poems about hope and happiness and heartache and finding your way home.

Magazine Stand :: Wordrunner eChapbooks – April 2022

Wordrunner literary magazine cover image

The prose and poetry in the 12th anthology and 45th issue of Wordrunner eChapbooks is themed “Up Ending” and offers both heartache and hope, wonderfully nuanced characters, and mostly upbeat endings. Read online or download as a PDF with fiction by Nancy Bourne, Frank Diamond, D.B. Gardner, Joyce Goldenstern, Natascha Graham, Mary Lewis, and Fabriana Martinez; nonfiction by Rachel Cann, Sarah Mullen, and Mary Cuffe Perez; and poetry by Iris Dunkle, Mark Heathcote, and Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith. Wordrunner notes that “ALL AUTHORS ARE PAID and have been since this series was launched in 2010.”

Magazine Stand :: Flash Frog – April 2022

Flash Frog online literary magazine logo

Featuring stories under 1000 words, Flash Frog says they like their stories like they like their dart frogs: “small, brightly colored, and deadly to the touch.” Publishing a new story every Monday, recent contributors include Maria Poulatha, Courtney Clute, Sage Tyrtle, and Dri Chiu Tattersfield, with artwork by MarieJulie Lafrance and Rob Kaniuk. Submissions are on a rolling basis, with July being reserved for “ghost story submissions only.”

Book Review :: The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Dawnie Walton’s debut novel is a book by the main character Sunny Curtis, the first African-American female editor of a mythical, music magazine. Sunny seeks to discover the details surrounding the death of her father, who was killed at the final concert of Opal and Nev, a fictional duo from the early 1970s. Everybody knows what happened to him, but nobody knows exactly how and why he died in a riot near the end of that performance. Making matters more complicated, Opal was having an affair with Sunny’s father. The book is a series of interviews with those surrounding the event, plus Sunny’s editor’s notes.

Walton uses this setup to raise questions about privilege surrounding race and gender. While Nev, a White British man, goes on to have a successful career after the event, Opal, a Black woman, never has a chance to do so. Others define Opal in ways that limit her, even while she tries to challenge a variety of establishments. Nev plays music that makes people comfortable, so he succeeds. Opal’s struggles are mirrored in Sunny’s work and the events that surround one final revival show for Opal and Nev, revealing that not much has changed in fifty years.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton. 37 Ink, March 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. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

New Book :: Henry Hamlet’s Heart

Henry Hamlet's Heart by Rhiannon Wilde book cover image

Henry Hamlet’s Heart
YA Fiction by Rhiannon Wilde
Charlesbridge, October 2022

Henry Hamlet doesn’t know what he wants after school ends. It’s his last semester of high school, and all he’s sure of is his uncanny ability to make situations awkward. Luckily, he can always hide behind his enigmatic best friend, Len. They’ve been friends since forever, but Len is mysterious and Henry is clumsy, and Len is a heartthrob and Henry is a neurotic mess. Somehow it’s always worked. That is, until Henry falls in love. Hard. How do you date your best friend? Rhiannon Wilde’s first novel invites readers to explore this passionate story of growing up, letting go, and learning how to love.

Magazine Stand :: Bennington Review – Issue 10

Bennington Review literary magazine cover image

Housed at Bennington College, Bennington Review is a diverse treasure trove of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and film writing shared with readers in print twice a year with many contributions available to read online. While editing the Winter 21-22 issue, Michael Dumanis, with Katrina Turner, references Robert Duncan’s “Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow,” and writes, “we kept considering the simultaneous fragility and power of the open field, the purity of nature and the purity of the imagination, environment and memory. As a consequence, much of the poetry and prose in our new issue offers meadows of nature and nature of thought, literal meadows and figurative ones for us to wander into, clearings with flowers and refuges from noise, everlasting omens of what is.”

Continue reading “Magazine Stand :: Bennington Review – Issue 10”

Magazine Stand :: Prime Number Magazine – Issue 223

Prime Number Magazine logo

The April-June 2022 issue of Prime Number Magazine features winners of their free, monthly 53-Word Story Contest selected since the last issue. In each issue, PNM asks guest editors to select their favorite poems or stories from those submitted during our open submission period. Submissions are free and only accepted the first two months of each quarter. In this issue, guest editor Adrian Rice selected poetry from Rick Campbell, Stephen Gibson, Mercedes Lawry, and Emily Townsend. Guest editor Dennis McFadden selected short fiction by Jonh Fulton, Mary Taugher, and Treena Thibodeau. The publication also showcases four authors from their publisher, Press 53. This issue includes works by Ray Morrison, Sean Sexton, Jacinta V. White, and Rhonda Browning White.

Cleaver Workshops Spring-Summer 22

Cleaver Workshops logo

Cleaver literary magazine may be based out of Philadelphia, but in keeping with their “international” status, their online workshops are open to all with internet access using both Zoom and Canvas platforms in synchronous and asynchronous modalities. Upcoming workshops include:

THE WRITE TIME for practice and inspiration
Taught by Cleaver Editor Andrea Caswell

MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass
Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa

WRITING THE BODY
Taught by Marnie Goodfriend

UNSHAPING THE ESSAY: Experimental Forms in Creative Nonfiction
Taught by Cleaver Editor Sydney Tammarine

TELL ME WHAT YOU EAT, And I Will Tell You What You Are
Writing About Food and Ourselves taught by Kristen Martin

Visit the Cleaver Workshops page for more information.

New Book :: Ready, Set, Oh

Ready Set Oh by Diane Josefowicz book cover image

Ready, Set, Oh
Fiction by Diane Josefowicz
Flexible Press, May 2022

Diane Josefowicz’s debut novel, Ready, Set, Oh, is set against the upheavals of the Sixties and chronicles the struggles of a man who has just lost his draft deferment, a young pregnant woman with fragile mental health, and a UFO-chasing astronomer, each hostages in their own way to their families and to history. A portion of the proceeds from Ready, Set, Oh goes to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, a social change organization dedicated to creating a social, political, and economic environment in which violence against women no longer exists.

Contest :: 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest

Screenshot of CARVE's flyer for the 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest
click image to open PDF

Deadline: May 16, 2022
Carve Magazine’s 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest is open through May 16. Accepting submissions from all over the world. Max 10,000 words. Prizes: $2,000, $500, $250, + 2 Editor’s Choice $125 each. All 5 winners will be published in the Fall 2022 issue and reviewed by lit agencies. Entry fee $17 online. Guest judge Dariel Suarez. Guidelines and instructions: www.carvezine.com/raymond-carver-contest/.

Book Review :: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Emily St. John Mandel takes the reader through locations that range from the woods of British Columbia to colonies on the moon and through times that move from 1912 to 2401. Her story follows several characters: Edwin, the youngest child in a British family who will inherit almost nothing and who is exiled to Canada after he questions England’s role in India; Gaspery Roberts, a hotel detective who takes on a case with implications he could never imagine; and Olive Llewellyn, a novelist on a book tour for her work about a pandemic in a world where such tragedies happen more and more frequently. Mandel draws on her experience for the last character, as readers and critics have seen her Station Eleven as prescient in its portrayal of a much worse pandemic than our current one. She draws on questions and comments from her book tours for some of the more humorous parts of the novel. Overall, however, she’s interested in larger questions of time and reality, even exploring whether or not the characters’ world — and, thus, our own — is nothing more than a simulation. If so, though, she seems to say that doesn’t make it any less meaningful.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Alfred A. Knopf, April 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. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter at @kevinbrownwrite or at http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

New Book :: Anthropocene Lullaby

Anthropocene Lullaby poetry by K. A. Hays book cover image

Anthropocene Lullaby
Poetry by K. A. Hays
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

The poems of Anthropocene Lullaby move from the micro to the macro, from dragonflies to galaxies, from the intersecting forces of climate change, capitalism, and digital technologies to intersecting anxieties of selfhood and motherhood. These lyric and prose poems track change: underway and inevitable, personal and impersonal, generative and apocalyptic. The title poem sets in motion some of the collection’s concerns:

Continue reading “New Book :: Anthropocene Lullaby”

New 5-in-5 Interview with Mohja Kahf

Glass Mountain logo

Love interviews with writers? How about bite-sized ones? Don’t forget about Glass Mountain‘s weekly 5-in-5 series. The series gives established writers 5 minutes to answer just 5 questions.

On April 15, they published their interview with Mohja Kahf. Kahf is the author of My Lover Feeds Me Grapfruit, winner of several awards (including a Trailblazer Award from the Radius of Arab American Writers), and her writing is available in Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Italian, French, and German translations.

One of my favorite parts of the interview is how she expresses erasure poems as her least favorite trend, but how she values those who can devote themselves to the genre.

Erasure poems is my least favorite because it means you have to devote a lot of time to a piece of writing you want to undermine by strip-mining it to create a counter-statement that exposes the ironies of the original text, or its ambiguities or moral flaws or whatever.

Mohja Kahf, 5-in-5 interview with Glass Mountain

Stop by their site to learn who Kahf is reading right now, what work by someone else she wished she had written, what was the best money she ever spent as a writer, and what she would do if she wasn’t a writer.

Magazine Stand :: Southern Humanities Review – 55.1

Southern Humanities Review literary magazine cover image

This newest issue of Southern Humanities Review published quarterly by the Department of English at Auburn University features nonfiction by Monica Judge, Evan Joseph Massey; fiction by Scott Gloden, Kyle Francis Williams, Connor White, Ps Zhang; poetry by Lisa Ampleman, Caitlin Cowan, Esteban Ismael, Lh Lim, Lance Larsen, Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo, Emilia Phillips, Vasantha Sambamurti, Jace Raymond Smellie, Julia Thacker, and John Sibley Williams. Cover image: Cicada Summer, watercolor on paper, 2021, by Veronica Steiner. Some content can be read online and individual copies, as well as subscriptions, are available by visiting the Southern Humanities Review website.

New Book :: My Identity as a Stereotypical Side Character

My Identity as a Stereotypical Side Character poetry by Marcus Campbell book cover image

My Identity as a Stereotypical Side Character
Poetry by Marcus Campbell
Brick Cave Media, February 2022

My Identity as a Stereotypical Side Character is a complex interlocking of the personal, communal, and societal that reflects the challenges of growing up as a mixed-race minority in the new millennium. Campbell spares no subject, be it family, others, or even himself in this powerful collection of poetry that deals with mental health, race, and addiction.

Magazine Stand :: Blue Collar Review – Winter 21-22

Blue Collar Review literary magazine cover image

Blue Collar Review: Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature editors write in their introduction to this newest issue, “These are the kinds of poems, the kind of collection, that you will likely not find in other literary magazines and journals, though we wish that were not the case. Poems in this issue confront cultural discrimination as well as wrestling with our unchosen places and complicity in the web of racism that defines U.S. society. This includes the struggle against cultural arrogance that seeks to oppress other languages and those who speak them. Other poems speak of the accumulated loneliness and difficulties of the pandemic and questions what the ‘new normal’ will be. . . Also prominent are poems and prose on the poisoning of the poor and Black communities for profit by fossil fuel corporations in Louisiana’s ‘cancer alley’ and their power over elected officials.” The full editorial content and samples from the current issue can be read on the Blue Collar Review website.

Magazine Stand :: Apple Valley Review – Spring 2022

Apple Valley Review online literary magazine cover image

In addition to having a most gorgeous cover photograph by Kyaw Tun, the newest issue of Apple Valley Review (17.1) features creative nonfiction by Charlotte San Juan and Amy Kroin; short fiction by Péter Moesko (translated from the Hungarian by Walter Burgess and Marietta Morry) and Lucy Zhang; and poetry by Jane C. Miller, Wojciech Kass (translated from the Polish by Daniel Bourne), Lulu Liu, Paola d’Agnese (translated from the Italian by Toti O’Brien), Amanda Rachel Robins, and Nathaniel Cairney.

Magazine Stand :: Plume – #128

Plume online poetry magazine issue 128 cover image

Plume is an easily accessible and beautifully formatted online poetry magazine comes out monthly, and you’ll want to keep up with each issue of Plume. The April 2022 installment features poems by Cecilia Woloch, Tomaž Šalamun in translation by Brian Henry, Rigoberto Paredes (includes audio) translated from Spanish by Frances Simán, Olya Kenney, Nin Andrews, Maurice Manning, Louis-Philippe Dalembert (includes audio) translated from French by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Linda Bierds, Katherine Soniat, Jane Hirshfield, Garrett Hongo, and Adam Tavel, as well as an interview with Gregory Orr by Nancy Mitchell.

New Book :: What Passes Here for Mountains

What Passes Here for Mountains poetry by Matt Morton book cover image

What Passes Here for Mountains
Poetry by Matt Morton
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

These poems are a kaleidoscopic journey across locales ranging from the West Texas desert to the bustling streets of Rome, from the social realm of festivity and ritual to the privacy of the imagination. Along the way, the search for meaning and stability within a world in constant flux is enlivened by a surrealist vitality. Cezanne and Shakespeare’s Caliban commingle with indie rock musicians and Humpy-Dumpty. A mystical encounter with an Edward Hopper painting butts heads with the mundanity of waking again to one’s morning routine. Poems of wry self-deprecation are juxtaposed with quiet meditations on memory, grief, and the relationship between the self and the cosmos.

New Book :: So, Stranger

So Stranger poetry by Topaz Winters book cover image

So, Stranger
Poetry by Topaz Winters
Button Poetry, May 2022

Winner of the Button Poetry Short Form Contest, Topaz Winters’ third poetry collection spans three countries and three generations. In a series of ars poeticas, Winters questions the boundary between the things we inherit and those we owe, stands at the grave of the American dream, and unspools the enormous grace and guilt of being loved.

Magazine Stand :: THEMA – Spring 2022

Thema literary magazine cover image

THEMA editors note this publication as three goals: “to provide a stimulating forum for established and emerging literary and visual artists, to serve as source material and inspiration for teachers of creative writing, and to provide readers with a unique and entertaining collection of stories, poems, art, and photography.” Providing readers with a premise for each issue, “A Postcard From the Past” is the theme for volume 34.1, filling the issue with images of postcards, narratives about them, and images of some of the postcard handwriting as well. Upcoming themes and submission deadlines can be found on the THEMA website.

April 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Housatonic Book Awards

Screenshot of the 2022 Housatonic Book Awards flyer

Deadline: June 13, 2022
The MFA in Creative and Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University is now accepting all books published in 2021 for the 2022 Housatonic Book Awards. Open to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young adult/middle grade. Winners receive $1,500 and an invitation to our summer or winter residency. See our website for past winners and submission details.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

April 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Bath Novel Award

Screenshot of the 2022 Bath Novel Award eLitPak flyer
click image to open PDF

Deadline: May 31, 2022
Now in its ninth year, this $4,000 international prize has been instrumental in launching the careers of novelists such as The Girl With The Louding Voice author Abi Dare and new James Bond author Kim Sherwood. A $2,300 longlist prize is co-sponsored by Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and Professional Writing Academy. Open to unpublished and indie published novelists worldwide. Enter here.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

April 2022 eLitPak :: Madville Publishing Extends AWP22 Discount

Screenshot of Madville Publishing's extended AWP 2022 special discount
click image to open PDF

Since our beautiful new books never made it to AWP this year, we are extending the conference discount to everyone…use awp22 at checkout for a 10% discount when you order from the Madville Publishing website through the month of April! See them all at our website.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

April 2022 eLitPak :: 2023 Bellevue Literary Review Prizes

Bellevue Literary Review April 2022 eLitPak Flyer

Deadline: July 1, 2022
The annual Bellevue Literary Review Prizes award outstanding writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body. Winners are published in the spring issue of BLR. For each genre, first prize is $1000 and honorable mention is $250. Submit your best poetry, fiction and nonfiction through July 1. View website.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

April 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards Deadline Approaching

screenshot of december magazine's March & April 2022 eLitPak flyer
click image to open PDF

Deadline: May 1, 2022
december Magazine seeks submissions for our 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards in fiction and creative nonfiction. Prizes each genre — $1,500 & publication (winner); $500 & publication (honorable mention). All finalists will be listed in the 2022 Fall/Winter awards issue. $20 entry fee includes a copy of the awards issue. Submit 1 story or essay up to 8,000 words by May 1. Complete guidelines at our website.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

New Book :: The J Girls: A Reality Show

The J Girls A Reality Show by Rochelle Hurt book cover image

The J Girls: A Reality Show
Mixed Genre by Rochelle Hurt
Indiana University Press, March 2022

Winner of the 2021 Blue Light Books Prize, Rochelle Hurt’s The J Girls: A Reality Show is a tribute to the grit and glitter of millennial girlhood and a testament to its dangers and traumas. Ignoring the optimistic advice of elders, Jocelyn, Jodie, Jennifer, Jacqui, Joelle – five working-class teens in the Rust Belt – band together in their embrace of bad behavior and poor taste as they navigate sexuality and identity with loud-mouthed joy and clear-eyed cynicism. Hurt’s genre-bending mix of poetry, fiction, and screenplay brings the girls to life with campy performances of monologues, soap opera clips, mock interviews, talk shows, commercials, and even burlesque. Vulgar, rhapsodic language serves as costume and shield, allowing the J Girls to script their own images and project glowing, outsized versions of themselves into the safe space of the TV screen.

Magazine Stand :: The Woven Tale Press – X3

The Woven Tale Press online literary magazine cover image

The Woven Tale Press Magazine: A Premier Literary and Fine Art Publication Highlighting Stellar Writing and Visual arts releases ten issues per year, and the newest issue features works by Britt Breeden, Laurence Elle Groux, Carol Hamilton, Lydia Host, Ivan Kanchev, Gaya Lastovjak, Diane G. Martin, Michele O’Brien, Cynthia Parson McDaniel, Nick J. Perez, Rob Price, Darren Smith, and Sharon Wahl. Sign up for free to read it online or subscribe and have each new issue delivered fresh to your inbox!

April 2022 eLitPak :: Recent Titles from Livingston Press

Screenshot of Livingston Press recent titles flyer for the April 2022 elitPak
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Now available from Livingston Press: Searching for Jimmy Page by Christy Alexander Hallberg and An Art, A Craft, A Mystery by Laura Secord. View our flyer to learn more about these two titles and visit our website to grab your copies.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

April 2022 eLitPak :: Flying South 2022 Annual Competition

Screenshot of Flying South's March 2022 eLitPak Flyer
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$2,000 in prizes. From March 1 to May 31, Flying South 2022 will be accepting entries for prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Best in Category winners will be published and receive $500 each. The WSW President’s award winner will win an additional $500. All entries will be considered for publication. For full details, please visit our website.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

April 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Taos Writers Conference

screenshot of Taos Writers Conference March 2022 eLitPak Flyer
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Join us in the beautiful Taos, New Mexico, for an award-winning writers conference over the weekend of July 29 through July 31 for over twenty workshops in every genre and keynote speaker/author: Ana Castillo. Confirmed faculty include Leeanna Torres, Beth Piatote, EJ Levy, T.J. English, Juan Morales, Connie Josefs, Amy Beeder, and many more. For further information visit website, call 575-758-0081, or email.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

New Book :: Out Beyond the Land

Out Beyond the Land poetry by Kimberly Burwick book cover image

Out Beyond the Land
Poetry by Kimberly Burwick
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

Out Beyond the Land refracts the subtle moments in nature where what is seen and unseen twists and loops back, gently nudging the speaker to question how knowledge is formed and memorialized. Using the Latin’s “A priori” and “A posteriori” as a starting point, these lyrics work to form a kind of double helix in which the strands of empirical knowledge and intuitive knowledge twist and become one. In the silence that follows, the speaker comes to terms with both her attachment to nature’s permanence and nature’s solid independence from our attachment.

April 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest

Screenshot of CARVE's flyer for the 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest
click image to open PDF

Deadline: May 16, 2022
Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver Short Story Contest is open April 1 – May 16. Accepting submissions from all over the world. Max 10,000 words. Prizes: $2,000, $500, $250, + 2 Editor’s Choice $125 each. All 5 winners published in Fall 2022 issue and reviewed by lit agencies. Entry fee $17 online. Guest judge Dariel Suarez. Guidelines and instructions: at our website.

View the full April 2022 eLitPak Newsletter.

Magazine Stand :: Bellevue Literary Review – Issue 42

Bellevue Literary Review cover image

Featured in Issue 42 of Bellevue Literary Review are the winners and honorable mentions for the John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry judged by Crystal Valentine, the Goldberg Prize for Fiction judged by Amy Hempel, and the Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction judged by Michele Harper. Contributors include fiction by Nitin K. Ahuja (Winner with “Step-Down”), Angie Sijun Lou (Honorable Mention with “Pale Unappy Dog”), C.C. Reid, Rachel Hall, Cécile Barlier, Jon Cohn, Madeline Haze Curtis, AJ Cameron, C.J. Hribal, Sofi Stambo; nonfiction by Avra Aron (Winner with “In My Head”), Emily Carter (Honorable Mention with “Casualty”), Lindsay Starck, Mallika Sekhar, Barbara West; poetry by Michael M. Weinstein (Winner with “Drought Pastoral”), Laura Paul Watson (Honorable Mention with “Six Weeks Into Chemotherapy”), Judith Fox, R.J. Petteway, John Kneisley, Jessica Yuan, Melissa J. Varnavas, Katherine Gaffney, Kan Ren Jie, Connemara Wadsworth, Esther Abisola Omole, Suzanne Manizza Roszak, T. Le, Stubbs, Charlene Fix, and Rachel S. Brooks.

Where to Submit Round-up: April 15, 2022

And just like that April is half over with. Don’t let the stretches of nice weather stop you from writing and editing your work. Keep your submissions goals going strong. To help, here is a round-up of calls for submissions and writing contests featured on NewPages. Don’t forget newsletter subscribers get a first look.

Do you know what else newsletter subscribers get? First access to our monthly eLitPak newsletters. Our April eLitPak was emailed to subscribers on Wednesday. You can view it here. Don’t forget to subscribe for more!

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Magazine Stand :: Valley Voices – 22.1

Valley Voices literary magazine cover image

Valley Voices: A Literary Review 22.1 is a special issue on “The Sense of Place” dedicated to Dr. Marla Cowie (1942-2021), former Professor of English and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at Mississippi Valley State. It begins with a special feature with several works by and an interview with Elaine Terranova. The issue is filled with poetry by Angela Ball, Lois Baer Barr, Matthew Brennan, David Dear, George Drew, Theodore Haddin, Juliet Hinton, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Steve Myers, Mamie Osborne, Charles Rammelkamp, Anina Robb, Kelly Talbot, Larry D. Thomas, Susan Weaver, and Michael P. Wright, and includes prose works by Bob Chikos, Gary Fincke, Jacqueline St. Joan, DC Berry, and Jon Peede. Front cover photograph, “Hongmei 120 Folding Camera” by John Zheng.

Magazine Stand :: Humana Obscura – Issue 4

Humana Obscura literary magazine cover image

The Spring/Summer 2022 issue of Humana Obscura – an independent nature-focused literary magazine – features work by 84 new, emerging, and established contributors from around the globe, as far as South Africa, United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Australia, the Cayman Islands, Germany, and throughout North America. Contributors include Melanie Shoeniger, Susan G. Sancomb, Byron Wilson, Andre Peltier, Jaqi Holland, Kimberly Kling, Roger Camp, Ian William L., Meg Venter, Maureen Bennett, Genevieve Leavold, and more. Available to read online or order a print copy.

Book Review :: Walking with Aletheia: A Survivor’s Memoir by Jean Hargadon Wehner

Walking with Aletheia A Survivor's Memoir by Jean Hargadon Wehner book cover image

Guest Post by Bruce Mason

Netflix’s The Keepers – which was released five years ago in 2017 — follows the investigation into the 1969 death of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a Baltimore nun and former Archbishop Keough High School teacher, by a group of investigators including her former students. Her murder remains, to this day, unsolved, but members of her community believe she was killed to cover up Keough’s allegedly rampant clergy sex abuse, which was brought to light in the ’90s. One abuse victim previously known as “Jane Doe” is at the center of it all. “Doe” has since come forward publicly, leading many to wonder: What is Jean Hargadon Wehner doing now?

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New Book :: Plainchant

Plainchant by Eamon Grennan book cover image

Plainchant
Poetry by Emon Grennan
Red Hen Press, June 2022

Grennan’s new collection shows again his powers of close, patient, plainspoken observation. Whether his gaze falls on the dash of a hare, dive of a gannet, heavy stillness of a rain-flecked cow, the song of a lark, or the scurry of an ant across a page of Celan, the poem that emerges is a celebration of the momentary fact, how a particular detail can, when sufficiently attended to, glow with the truth of its own unrepeatable self. Set mostly in the landscape of coastal Connemara, these poems can also bring to vivid life a painting by Bonnard, a family walk, a childhood memory, a chance encounter, a man scything a field, or a brief probing of the work of Beckett.

Contest :: The Magpie Award for Poetry Closes Soon!

Screenshot of Pulp Literature's flyer for the Magpie Award for Poetry 2022
click image to open PDF

Deadline: April 15, 2022
The Magpie Award for Poetry is for previously unpublished poems up to 100 lines in length. Poetry that relies on visual structure is eligible for prize money but may be excluded from publication if the formatting is difficult to reproduce. $500 prize. Entrants receive a 1-year digital subscription to Pulp Literature. Fee: $25 1st poem, $10 each subsequent poem. Deadline: April 15, 2022. View website.

Contest :: Cow Creek Chapbook Prize 2022

Cow Creek Chapbook Prize poetry chapbook contest logo

Deadline: May 15, 2022
The Cow Creek Chapbook Prize is a poetry chapbook contest brought to you by Pittsburg State University. We’re open to all styles and subjects. As long as the poems challenge and capture the imagination, we want to see them. Submit a manuscript of 15 to 30 pages by May 15 at www.cowcreekchapbook.org. This year’s guest judge is Chen Chen.

Magazine Stand :: West Trade Review – Volume 13

West Trade Review literary magazine cover image

The Spring 2022 issue of the annual print edition of West Trade Review includes fiction by Jessica Denzer, Sam Asher, Roger Topp, and Elizabeth Childs; poetry by Luke Johnson, Melissa Ginsburg, Jordan Charlton, Dare Williams and Kara Knickerbocker; Creative Nonfiction by Les Brady, Shanisha Branch, Thomas Kevin O’Rourke, Sarah Edmonds, and Sandra Hager Eliason; Visual Art by and interviews with Kelechi Nwaneri, Tania Nneji, and Segun Aiyesan – and this is just a small sampling of the contents, some of which are available to read online. Cover image: “Flooded Apartment 3” by Kelechi Nwaneri.

Call :: Able Muse Winter 2022/2023 Issue

cover of literary magazine Able Muse

Deadline: July 15, 2022
Don’t forget Able Muse is currently accepting submissions for their forthcoming issue, Winter 2022/2023. Submit poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, art, and photography. Submission opens yearly January 1 and closes July 15. Read their guidelines and submit at www.ablemuse.com/submit/.

New Book :: Bassinet

Bassinet poetry by Dan Rosenberg book cover image

Bassinet
Poetry by Dan Rosenberg
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

Dan Rosenberg’s third collection moves from loss into parenthood, exploring the roles of husband and father: their limits, their possibilities, and how they intersect with the wider world. Grounded in the familial, these poems wrestle with the political and the ecological, with heritage and hope, reimagining the breadth of home and what it means for one man to raise another to love it.