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!
Salamander #52 features poetry from Anemone Beaulier, Stephanie Burt, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Leila Chatti, JD Debris, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Charles Douthat, Ananda Lima, Angie Macri, Ricky Ray, Rochelle Robinson-Dukes, Leah Umansky, Sara Moore Wagner, Yun Wang, Erica Wright, Maria Zoccola.
The 2021 Issue #49 of the Paterson Literary Review features poetry, fiction, essays, memoir, and reviews, and includes all the winning and honorable mention poems for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Work by Jan Beatty, Jack Ridl, Nellie Wong, R. Bremner, Seema Tepper, Vida Chu, and more.
Short stories “Work” by Chad Szalkowski-Ference and “Haze” by Mike Nees take you across the white plains of the Tularosa Basin and into a hazy apartment complex. From joyous lyricism to stark realism, the poems this issue are a bricolage of loss, grief, solitude, and joy. Wrapping up the issue are visual arts and comics by Kelsey M. Evans, Rachel Singel, Dustin Jacobus, Lia Barsotti Hiltz, Coco Picard, and Laila Milevski. Read more at the Driftwood Press website.
Unforeseen urgencies, heightened introspections. The long Covid siege has put pressure on everything, not least the expressive arts. AGNI 93, with its unsettling cover and art portfolio by Deepa Jayaraman, channels the mood of the times. The issue includes poetry by Rafael Campo, Hope Wabuke, and others, and more. Check out the AGNI website to see what else is in this issue.
I am delighted each time the annual Rattle Young Poets Anthology appears wrapped in the package with the companion issue of Rattle. Over twenty poets ranging from age five to fifteen are featured in this year’s publication. It would be easy to fall into the trap of saying, “These are great poems for writers so young,” when the truth is quite simply: These are great poems. The opening work by Maria Arrango, “¿Identity?” which begins “El president Donald Trump said / they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. // My brown sugar skin delicately / compresses me with warmth / as I try to understand / the anatomy of my body.” is the immediate indicator that these young poets hold their own among their elder peers. Age is indeed just a number.
There are poems that disrupt the idea of idyllic youth, such as Matthew Burk’s “The Roller Coaster” and Maria Gil Harris’s “Like Magic,” as well as those that confront reality, like Adrianna Ho’s “Pasta Sandwiches in Quarantine” and Ivy Hoffman’s “Only Days Before Leaving for College, I Note the Existence of My Brother.” Some poems reach deep to connect imagery and emotion: Ha Trang Tran’s “A Love Letter for Home,” imagining a “grand return” to Hà Nộ, and Hannah Straub’s “Cadillac Mountain” with haunting lines like, “Though I was not falling / I was stumbling, in the way I clung to people / I could not reach, memories as useless / As the wire guardrails.” And there are plenty of works that raised a smile through their intellectual rhetoric, like “The Weight of Heavens” by Emma Hoff, which begins with the barb, “Was the minotaur / Really / A monster?” Kakul Gupta’s “Ten Haiku” are each effective meditations, and Mackenzie Munoz’s “Catching Dreams” reaches the metaphysic, while other works were just plain fun, like Paul Ghatak’s “Counting to One,” Grant’s “Lions Roar,” and Melissa A. Di Martino’s “Saive Me By Thes Wendrous.” Shreya Vikram’s “DIY Project” is the kind of poem that can only be experienced, and with good reason, as, in response to the Contributor’s Note question, “Why do you like writing poetry?” Vikram’s answer begins, “Without poetry, I’d waste language.”
For any readers out there with young writers in your circle, please introduce them to Rattle and this annual collection. It’s essential for young writers to connect with other young writers and find encouragement for their own reading, writing, and submissions. For more resources, check out the NewPages Young Writers Guide to Publications and NewPages Young Writers Guide to Contests.
[It is challenging to include mention of every work in a review, but I want to acknowledge the remaining poets from this collection and commend them for their contributions, all of which brought me immense pleasure to read: Natalia Chepel, Natalie Friis, Kevin Gu, Jessie Johnson, Dahee Joy Kang, Chloe Lin, Naomi Ling, Joseph Miner, and Perry Sloan.]
“While the contest is called the ‘Poet Hunt,’ I didn’t actually have to hunt very long for worthy poems; they arrived in batches, and it was quite a literary bounty,” Matthew Olzmann says introducing the winner and honorable mentions of Poet Hunt 25 in the Winter 2021 issue of The MacGuffin.
Winner
“No Rehearsal” by Vivian Shipley
Honorable Mentions
“Bright Spot” by Rita Schweiss
“Dogs and Ominous Weapons” by John Jeffire
Following the winning poems, readers can find a selection of poems by the guest judge of Poet Hunt 26, Indigo Moor.
Have you ever seen a piece of art in a literary magazine and loved it so much you wanted to frame it? Now you can do just that with art from contributors to Driftwood Press.
Art by Kelsey M. Evans, Coz, Jason Hart, Nathaniel Saint Amour, Rachel Slotnick, and Samantha Fortenberry is now available in the Driftwood Press shop in the form of posters, framed posters, and T-Shirts. An enamel pin designed by Jerrod Schwarz is also forthcoming at the end of July 2021 and can be preordered now. Each item listing links back to the artists’ Instagram accounts for easy following.
Decorate your walls and show off your love for art and literary magazines with the help of Driftwood Press‘s shop.
On June 17, online literary magazine MAYDAY Magazine announced the results of their 2021 MAYDAY Prizes in poetry and fiction. The winners each received $1,000 and broadsides of their work will be available soon.
2021 MAYDAY Poetry Prize was judged by Jacques Rancourt. He selected “Garçon,” by A. Shaikh as the winner.
Finalists included “Southern Thundering” by Gustav Hibbett; “What My Mother Never Told Me” by Michael Meyerhofer; “During the Pandemic, I Watch Caddyshack Again & Again” by Christina Olson; and “The Cousin’s Secret” by Lindsay Wilson.
For the 2021 MAYDAY Fiction Prize, Kali Wallace selected Haley Kennedy’s “Shapeless” as the winner.
Finalists included “Paradise” by Joshua Beggs; “The Book of Rusty” by Benjamin Drevlow; “Tia Marilena’s Rainbow Eggs” by Xenia Lane; “Lolly Pop” by Toby Lloyd; and “Valley State” by Reilly Weed. Semifinalists included “Verge” by Emma Eisler; “The Management” by Ron Heacock; “Nudists” by Jeffery Long; and “A Trip to Valpo” by Mark Williams.
MAYDAY also has a listing on NewPages, so don’t forget to swing by there, too.
In Issue 82 of Bellingham Review is a feature on asemic art: “To Those Whose Eyes Wander.” This feature includes work by Sam Roxas-Chua who was interviewed by Stephen Haines. In this interview, the two discuss Roxas-Chua’s asemic work in the issue and elsewhere, and it wraps up with a list of music, books, and film that have moved the poet lately.
Haines asks Roxas-Chua about the work found in Issue 82:
STEPHEN: New Beak and Exhale is another favorite of mine from the work you contributed to Issue 82. I have read that you often use processes like ekphrasis in your work, and I can’t help wondering about that act of creating art in response to other art. Is the asemic writing in the right panel of New Beak and Exhale a direct response to the image on the left? The other way around? Or is this entire piece in conversation with something else entirely?
SAM: I was abandoned as a baby, but was fortunate to have a birth certificate and for some causes and conditions I was able to locate her in 2012. It didn’t have an Oprah show ending. A second rejection happened. I could go on and on about this story but find that it’s best to focus on the two images in hopes that it will let me narrate what I find difficult to tell. The two images are in conversation. Thank you for giving voice to that.
Coming up to that anniversary, I drew the bird image using collected soot made into ink, together with drops of squid ink. I wanted to write a poem by drawing an image. I mean, who is to say what a poem is and isn’t? In the tree where I was abandoned, I imagined I was fed by birds. When I was adopted, I was malnourished and had worms living inside my stomach. I was bloated like an egg. I believe the natural world was answering major questions. “Am I good? If I am good, why was I relinquished? What is wrong with me?”
The asemic writing on the right was a letter to my mother in asemic form where I was trying to exhaust everything I wanted to say. The image of the bird and the letter put together in conversation translates to “I am made of new beak and exhale.”
Check out the rest of the interview for poetry, information about asemic writing, and a great list of recommendations, or see what Issue 82’s asemic writing feature has to offer.
Guest Post by Harry Okorite Joy.
After reading Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, the most endearing became the phrase, “For you, a thousand times over”, first voiced by Hassan, inarguably the most sympathized with character in the novel. The simply titled yet convoluted novel narrates the coming-of-age story of two boys, discusses the state of a nation, celebrates the bond of friendship and, most importantly, the height and depth love could attain.
While at first, you might perceive Hassan as gullible, Amir as being undeserving of the love Hassan bestows on him, Baba being an impartial father, and Ali a loyal to a fault servant; soon you realize Hassan is an embodiment of selfless love Amir realizes all too late, Baba’s fairness is out of familial piety, and Ali’s loyalty is part due to his debt to Baba and a part special bond he feels with Hassan.
The Kite Runner questions reality and the nature of truth. The reality between the two main characters might be cold but it is the fact: one would always be there, the other loves but would never measure up. And at the end of the novel, only guilt allows Amir to return the favor to Hassan’s offspring. In reality, we also see the box of revelations opened at crucial points about characters like Baba. The nature of truth is tricky—some might say relative—but the unwavering answer is you cannot really judge the lies told in this novel as right or wrong.
While this piece has an optimistic ending, Hassan’s turbulent short-lived life could justify it as a tragedy, and just like me, you might begin to wonder if he died directly or indirectly from being there a thousand times over.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead Books, March 2013.
Reviewer’s bio: Harry Okorite Joy is an avid reader, budding writer and fashion enthusiast. She adores owls. Reach her via Instagram @o.k.o.r.i.t.e or Facebook @ Harry Okorite.
It is once again time to sign up for the August Poetry Postcard Festival! And this year’s event is a special tribute to Diana di Prima and Michael McClure.
Now in its 15th consecutive year, the concept is simple and fun: You sign up, and your name is added to a group along with 31 others. Once the group is “full,” you each get the list with names and addresses of participants in your group. The week before August, you start writing and sending your postcards (so that the first one arrives around the first of August). You write one postcard per day and send it to the person listed after your name in the group. The next day, you write another poem and send it to the next person – and so on until you go through the list. One for each day.
The idea is spontaneous writing without editing, censoring, or revision. You can use the postcard as your prompt or not. Some people choose a theme to write on for the month. The postcards vary from store bought to homemade, contemporary to vintage. It’s really wide open to your creativity, imagination, and passion. Then, throughout the month of August, you will receive poems in the mail from the others in your group.
Last year, the organizers began year-round registration – so you can actually register at any time of the year. In 2020, some participants started sending cards immediately upon registration, instead of waiting until August – and what a boost that was during the early days of the pandemic. A few ambitious writers completed their 31 cards and signed up for another group! The organizers welcome repeat participation.
There is a $15 fee which helps pay the bills and support the non-profit Seattle Poetics LAB, who organize this event as well as many others throughout the year. Registration closes July Sign up today!
Spend your summer enjoying new books and let our Book Stand help you find your next read. This month we feature six new and forthcoming titles.
Chris Haven’s debut poetry collection Bone Seeker celebrates the mystery of what we take into our lives and can’t let go.
Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie’s Born in a Second Language is an exploration of African and female identity, navigating what it means to be in-between identities, languages and homes.
Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn illuminates eight dramatic stories exploring the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna’s power and relevance for contemporary queer feminist audiences.
Please Plant This Book Coast to Coast by Susan Kay Anderson gives a voice to Virginia Brautigan Aste, spouse of Richard Brautigan for a decade.
A Poetics of the Press: Interviews with Poets, Printers, & Publishers edited by Kyle Schlesinger is the first collection of interviews with some of the pioneers working at the intersection of the artists book and experimental writing.
Miah Jeffra’s The Violence Almanac “is full of complex, flawed and wonderfully alive characters, written with empathy and honesty.”
You can learn more about each of these New & Noteworthy books at our website. Click here to see how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section.
Podcasts are still all the rage and literary magazines are supplementing the work they feature in print and online with podcast series. Colorado Review has it’s very own podcast series available in Apple Podcasts or the iTunes store.
They list the archive of their episodes, dating back to 2011, online. The most recent episode, posted on June 7, features podcast host C Culbertson sitting down with Brandon Krieg, author of Magnifier and winner of the 2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry. They talk ecopoetics, environmental thought, and how the practice of walking calls on us to notice the world around use.
To start with the walking. . . it’s such a practice for renewal of my own sort of mental state. It helps me get out of my head in a way. . . . You’re moving through a landscape, you’re noticing, you’re in your senses. . . it’s a way of getting out of thoughts for me.
You can also hear Krieg read a few poems from his book Magnifier.
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2021 issue of Colorado Review & subscribe today if you haven’t already.
Guest Post by Anne Richter Arnold.
There is a bigger difference between taking a hike, which almost everyone can do, and thru hiking. Thru hiking, tackling an entire long-distance trail over a period of months, takes a special kind of hiker. Celia Ryker is just that, one with dedication, perseverance, curiosity, and a sense of humor. Walking Home is a memoir of her epic experience hiking the 279-mile Long Trail from the Massachusetts border through Vermont to Canada. Along the way she entertains us with childhood memories and reflections on her life off the trail, interspersed with poetic references to the transforming experience of being in the woods.
With her milestone 60th birthday approaching, Celia decides to hike the Long Trail in Vermont, one of the most challenging trails in the United States, along with her friend Sandy. While Celia has been on some ‘practice hikes’ back in her home state of Michigan, nothing can prepare her for the grueling weeks of hiking through the Green Mountains. From torrential rain, disastrous falls, sickness, and everything in between, she and her hiking partner Sandy are tested daily, yet never fail to meet the challenges head on. Through all of this, she keeps us smiling with her can-do attitude and humorous anecdotes.
Walking Home is not just the story of Celia and Sandy’s multiyear section hiking of the Long Trail; it is a personal journey that the author shares with us as she looks back at her past and, literally and metaphorically, forward to the path of the unknown. We share in her reminiscences on how the woodlands brought her joy as a child and the self-knowledge they bring her as an adult. What lies ahead on the path, who she will meet and what she will discover, keeps the reader eagerly awaiting the next page.
While hiking the Long Trail may not be on everyone’s bucket list, Celia inspires us with her memoir to try something that will truly challenge ourselves, to take risks and to go forward into the unknown. She invites us to find our own way to leave the world behind and see what we can discover about ourselves, as she does, on our own challenging adventure.
Walking Home: Trail Stories by Celia Ryker. Rootstock Publishing, June 2021.
Reviewer bio: Anne Richter Arnold has been a journalist for various publications in New England for a decade, focusing on business and lifestyle topics, including wine and travel. She makes her home on the New Hampshire Seacoast, with her husband, two dogs, two cats, and a multitude of friendly chickens.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Guest Post by Natalie Hess.
Tara Sim’s Scavenge the Stars is a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, which follows a girl named Amaya who was sold to a shipowner when she was a small child in order to pay off a debt. She escapes from the ship and is helped out by a rich man who also appears to be landless. He helps her disguise herself and go back into the city she grew up in so she can get revenge on whoever sold her. I was a bit disappointed because I really loved The Count of Monte Cristo, but this novel was still quite entertaining.
There are plot twists I didn’t see coming, and there are some exciting action scenes, with romance that didn’t take over the whole story. It was particularly interesting to find out how some of the characters were acquainted with one another at the end of the story, and that was an unexpected and enjoyable aspect. This was a fairly average book though, and I gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim. Little, Brown and Company, January 2020.
Reviewer bio: I’m Natalie Hess and I’m simply a high school student who LOVES reading everything from scifi to romance to nonfiction and everything in between. I also love sharing my thoughts and I hope you enjoy!
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Radar Poetry is celebrating the launch of Issue 30 on Thursday, July 15 at 7PM EST via Zoom.
The event features 15 contributors reading their work: J’Anet Danielo, Romana Iorga, Brendan Constantine, Justin Rigamonti, Amy Lerman, Carolyn Supinka, Carolyn Oliver, Robert Krut, Lisa Creech Bledsoe, Melanie Kristeen Robinson, David Donna, Ruth Williams, Amy Dryansky, Ann DeVilbiss, and William Fargason.
Editors and co-founders Rachel Marie Patterson and Dara-Lyn Shrager will be moderating the event.
The Zoom link will be emailed the day of. While it is free, you do need to register via Eventbrite by 6:30 PM EST on July 15 in order to attend.
The summer issue of The Shore is stocked with simmering poetry by Linday Lusby, Jenn Koiter, Sarah Brockhaus, Grace Li, Karen Rigby, Brittany Atkinson, Erin Wilson, John Sibley Williams, Paul Ilechko, Audrey Gidman, Stella Lei, Todd Osborne, Bobby Parrott, William Littlejohn-Oram, David Ford, Matthew Valades, and more.
Guest Post by Carla Sarett.
Just when you think that no one’s writing epic poetry, beat hero Larry Beckett comes to the rescue with his entertaining Wyatt Earp. Wyatt Earp is a legend and Larry Beckett has captured the lonely dusty trails, the saloons, the gunfights, all of it with verve and humor.
This collection is a sublime mash-up of legal records, histories of Tombstone and Earp, Western folklore, and oh those Western movies—Dodge City, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and my favorite, John Ford’s My Darling Clementine. Beckett is a songwriter as well as a poet, and it shows in the musicality of these poems, as well as in the wonderful “Ballad to Maddie.”
Kudos to the publisher for a beautifully designed edition.
Wyatt Earp by Larry Beckett. Alternating Currents Press, March 2020.
Reviewer bio: Carla Sarett’s recent poems appear in Blue Unicorn, San Pedro River Review, The Remington Review and elsewhere. She awaits publication of her chapbook woman on the run (Unsolicited Press) and her novella, The Looking Glass (Propertius) later this year. Carla lives in San Francisco.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
The June 2021 issue of Poetry is out. In this issue, we are brought back to the body. Poetry by Lauren Whitehead, Felicia Zamora, Xaire, Cathy Linh Che, Lindsay Stuart Hill, Darius V. Daughtry, Christa Romanosky, Annik Adey-Babinski, Susan Browne, Sandra Gustin, Michaella Batten, Julia Edwards, Austin Rodenbiker, Tina Mozelle Braziel, Nyah Hardmon, Amorette “Epiphany” Lormil, Nicole Cooley, Ray McManus, and Marlanda Dekine-Sapient Soul. Nonfiction by Laura Kolbe.
A Gathering of Poets. Featuring work by Aracelis Girmay, Barbara Ras, Stacy Gnall, Claire Denson, Katie Berta, Merridawn Duckler, Varun Ravindran, Emily VIzzo, Andrew Hemmert, April Goldman, Enrique Servín Herrera translated by Katherine Silver and Robin Myers, Pedro Mir translated by Jonathan Cohen, and more. Read more at The Massachusetts Review website.
The Georgia Review’s Summer 2021 issue is now available for purchase. This issue features new writing from Eliot Weinberger, Laura Kasischke, jayy dodd, Shangyang Fang, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and many more, along with a translation of Kim Seehee’s fiction by Paige Aniyah Morris, an interview with Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Calvin Trillin on desegregation at the University of Georgia, and a special section on W. E. B. Du Bois’s influential 1900 data portraits on Black life in Georgia, which includes responses from both sociologist Janeria Easley and poets Vanessa Angélica Villarreal and Keith S. Wilson.
The latest issue of Blue Mountain Review has plenty to offer readers! Literary interviews featuring Chen Chen, Jose Hernandez Diax, Diane Goettel, Chip Delany, and more; music interviews with Pat Metheny, Adam Gussow, and others; and visual arts interviews with Daniel McClendon and Natalia Anciso.
Deadline: September 1, 2021
Event Dates: Oct. 13-17, 2021
Event Location: Lodge at Whitehawk Ranch in the Lost Sierras near Clio, California.
A generative and restorative writing retreat at the Lodge at Whitehawk Ranch in California facilitated by Carolyn Dawn Flynn, the Story Catalyst, acclaimed novelist, memoirist, and TEDx speaker; and poet, essayist, and novelist Jona Kottler. Let the pristine forest of California’s Lost Sierras be your inspiration for this generative and restorative retreat for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. This retreat will help you deepen and refine your work. Participants receive an extensive editorial letter and individual consultations with a mentor. The cuisine and the landscape will be sumptuous, and there will be time to write! carolynflynn.com/sierra-writing-retreat-2021/
At the end of every Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review issue is the “4×4” section. Here, four writers are asked the same four questions in a series of quickfire mini-interviews.
This year’s questions touch on corresponding with other writers, solitude and writing, finding a balance of beneficial and less beneficial reading, and how shock-resistant each poet’s writing process is. The writers interviewed are Noor Hindi, Hailey Leithauser, Cheswayo Mphanza, and Jon Kelly Yenser.
Work by these four poets can also be found in the 2020 issue.
Registration Deadline: August 21, 2021
Online Writers Conference hosted by Woodhall Press. Mission: to discover and support emerging writers. Featuring keynote by Gina Barreca; Introduction to Short Forms with Tom Hazuka and Darien Gee; Live Editing with Allison Williams; Openings and Hooks with Alena Dillon; Poetry with Charles Rafferty; Prose Writing with Eugenia Kim; and Screen Stories with Shelley Evans.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Join your fellow writers at the virtual 5th Annual Taos, New Mexico, Writers Conference on Zoom. Panel presentation on “Writing about Race, Class, Culture & Gender” plus over 20 workshops in all genres. Faculty include: Frank X Walker, CMarie Fuhrman, Levi Romero, Ari Honarvar, Stephanie Han, Jeremy Paden, Margaret Garcia and many more. Go to our website, call 575-758-0081, or email us.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Pursue graduate study during an intensive six-week summer session. Programs are available in: Children’s Book Writing & Illustrating; Children’s Literature (MA or MFA); Playwriting (MFA); Screenwriting & Film Studies (MA); Screenwriting (MFA). This summer courses will be offered virtually from June 21 – July 30. For more information, visit our website or call (540) 362-6575.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Guest Post by Natalie Hess.
What an incredible novel. Laini Taylor’s writing is so beautiful and dreamy and adventurous, which makes this book so much fun. All a reader needs to know about the plot going into it is that it follows a boy named Lazlo Strange who has an obsession for this city referred to as Weep, the real name of which has been lost. Someone from Weep comes to find people who can help the city out of trouble, and Lazlo finally gets to visit this city of his dreams and discover what it truly means to be a dreamer.
Readers make discoveries alongside Lazlo; see the beauty of Weep and what it could be, as well as the horrible things that have happened there; and learn about the past of all the characters. We truly get to know these characters and care for all of them, even the “bad guys,” creating such a roller coaster of emotion and wonder and longing for all of it to be real. Every single aspect of this book was mind blowing and I absolutely cannot wait to read the sequel!
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. Little, Brown and Company, March 2017.
Reviewer bio: I’m Natalie Hess and I’m simply a high school student who LOVES reading everything from scifi to romance to nonfiction and everything in between. I also love sharing my thoughts and I hope you enjoy!
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Get 15% off your first class at WritingWorkshops.com. Our classes are inclusive and intentionally small; offered on a rolling basis throughout the year; and taught by award-winning authors, agents, and editors. Use code NEWPAGES at checkout—but hurry, our upcoming classes are almost full! Discount expires 7/1/2021. Visit our website.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Don’t forget to check out these great new titles due out this summer from James Braziel, Mark Budman, Daren Dean, William Gay, and Terence Gallagher. We will have open reading once more in mid-August. Fiction only.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Early Placement Application Deadline: August 1 for November entry.
Spalding’s nationally distinguished low-residency MFA is the most affordable of the top-tier programs. Explore across genres, study one-on-one with outstanding faculty, gain editorial experience on Good River Review, and develop a lifelong writing community. Fiction; poetry; creative nonfiction; writing for children and young adults; writing for TV, screen, and stage; and professional writing. Certificate and Master of Arts in Writing also available. Scholarships, assistantships.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Happy Publication Month to Diode authors Shanta Lee Gander (GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA), Sally Rosen Kindred (WHERE THE WOLF), Conor Bracken (THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS ME), Teow Lim Goh (FARAWAY PLACES), Joey S. Kim (BODY FACTS), Natasha Sajé (SPECIAL DELIVERY), Amorak Huey & W. Todd Kaneko (SLASH / SLASH), Tyler Mills & Kendra DeColo (LOW BUDGET MOVIE)!
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Bellevue Literary Review annually hosts the BLR Prizes for “writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body.” The winner of each genre receives $1000, the honorable mention receives $250, and all are published in the spring issue. This year’s spring issue was recently released featuring the 2021 winners.
Winners
“Tattoos” by Galen Schram (Fiction)
“The Tapeworm” by Amy V. Blakemore (Nonfiction)
“Never the Less” by Saleem Hue Penny (Poetry)
Honorable Mentions
“Admonition” by Benjamin Kessler (Fiction)
“Viable” by Justine Feron (Nonfiction)
“Yellowthroat” by Eileen Elizabeth Waggoner (Poetry)
Submissions for this year’s prizes are currently open until July 15. Visit the journal’s website to learn more.
Able Muse is hosting a reading with the authors of The Powow River Poets Anthology II on Sunday, June 27 from 3-4PM EDT. The anthology was published by Able Muse Press in January 2021.
The Powow River Poets are a gathering of widely published, award-winning New England Poets, centered in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Their members are also from the Boston area and as far away as New York and Maine. 27 of these writers, including Rhina P. Espaillat, A.M. Juster, and Deborah Warren, are represented in the second edition of this anthology.
The reading is hosted by anthology editor Paulette Demers Turco and features Rhina P. Espaillat, Michael Cantor, M. Frost Delaney, Jean L. Kreiling, Alfred Nicol, and Anton Yakovlev. There will also be a Q&A session with the editor and authors.
The reading is free to attend via Zoom, but you do need to RSVP.
Literary magazine Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, edited by Duriel E. Harris, is now the host and curator of @Salon. Founded in 2011, @Salon is an interdisciplinary event welcoming artists and art enthusiasts to come together for conversation, poetry, spoken word, music, sound, performance, and visual and digital art. Obsidian‘s @Salon welcomes Black writers and artists and their allies to come together for conversation and exchange.
This year’s event QPlayaz|QPride @Salon 2021 will take place virtually viz Zoom on Tuesday, June 22 starting at 5:30PM PT/7:30PM CT/8:30PM ET.
Interdisciplinary artist and writer Ronaldo V. Wilson is the Play Leader and Playaz include Vidhu Aggarwal, Lucas de Lima, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Angela Peñaredondo. This event launches Obsidian‘s call for Genderqueer/Genrequeer Playground special issue curated by Wilson with an interactive poetry reading and mixed-genre queer conversation.
QPlaya-ground will feature rounds of verbal four square, double d-iz-utch, and tag between participants. RSVP here (did I mention it’s free?).
Guest Post by Milena Marques-Zachariah.
India is a paradox. To harness the nuances that create its vast and varied canvas and give them life in print can be challenging. But not for a gifted writer like Murzban Shroff, who chose to get embedded in India’s remote villages to unearth India’s heart. It is against this background mostly that his haunting stories play out. Shroff tells his stories with a visceral understanding of human behavior, reeling you in page by page, to mirror the lived realities of people: in villages, in slums, in hill towns, in cities. For further heft, he draws on ancient Indian epics and texts to reveal the spiritual truths of India.
Shroff’s prose is skillfully layered, yielding stories that are gripping and thought-provoking, while exploring issues and social tensions rooted in caste and communal identities. Starting with the first story, the “Kitemaker’s Dilemma” and ending with “An Invisible Truth,” the collection uncoils with an agonizing sense of drama and inevitability. With insights as powerful as Shiva’s third eye, Shroff forages through the attitudes, quirks, and insecurities of his characters to create situations that are uncomfortably real. His women are strong and unafraid, empowered and empowering, as evident in stories like “A Rather Strange Marriage” and “Third Eye Rising.” My personal favorites: “Bhikoo Badshah’s Poison” for its exploration of caste and migrant identities, “Diwali Star” for its family politics, and “A Matter of Misfortune” for its gritty depiction of human greed. By inviting readers into unseen spaces of India, Third Eye Rising makes for a compelling read—from the first story to the last.
Third Eye Rising by Murzban F. Shroff. Spuyten Duyvil, January 2021.
Reviewer bio: Milena Marques-Zachariah is an accomplished advertising writer, columnist, and blogger, whose writings are hugely popular with the South Asian immigrant community in Canada. Her blog ‘Canadian Chronicles’ documents the challenges and successes of immigrants to Canada, while ‘Chasing the Perfect Curry’ is a food adventure blog, where she explores off-the-beaten-path places to enjoy authentic cuisines of the Konkan Coast. She is also the founder of Radio Mango, a Toronto-based broadcast service, and has interviewed eminent authors such as Pico Iyer and Anosh Irani.
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The summer 2021 issue of West Trade Review features fiction by Desmond Fuller and Gregory Borse; poetry by Gina Marie Bernard, Monica Mills, Gaven Wallace, Anna Zwade, Yasmina Martin, Ann Weil, John M. Davis, KG Newman, Mara Lee Grayson, Mark Seidl, Kakie Pate, Jessica Hudson, Marc Frazier and Lance Le Gyrs; creative nonfiction by Amy Bowers, and much more.
Radar Poetry 30 is here! Featuring poetry by Lisa Creech Bledsoe, Brendan Constantine, Jason B. Crawford, Ja’net Danielo, Ann DeVilbiss, Sheila Dong, David Donna, Margaret Draft, Amy Dryansky, William Fargason, Robert Krut, Romana Iorga, Amy Lerman, Carolyn Oliver, Justin Rigamonti, and more.
June’s Plume featured selection is “Jen Sperry Steinorth: On Creating and Claiming Space with Her Read” by Amanda Newell. Jane Zwart reviews Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs. In nonfiction: “The Solid Objects of Stagnant Empires” by Irina Mashinski.
In this issue, find poetry by contest winners Saleem Hue Penny and Eileen Elizabeth Waggoner, as well as Stephanie Berger, Joanne Godley, Haolun Xu, Kwame Dawes, Chelsea Bunn, Kai Coggin, Pooja Mittal Biswas, and more; fiction contest winners Galen Schram and Benjamin Kessler as well as James Prier, Douglas Fenn Wilson, Jacob R. Weber, Emily Saso, Hadley Leggett, Moshe Zvi Marvit, and David Allan Cates. Read more at the Bellevue Literary Review website.
“It’s the best writing conference you’ve ever attended, in book form!”
Books by HippoCampus is excited to announce the publication of an anthology inspired by HippoCamp, an annual nonfiction conference, dedicated to writing creative nonfiction and what it means to be a writer who tells true stories.
Getting to the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction, edited by Rae Pagliarulo and Donna Talarico, is set to be released on August 11 and will be available for pre-orders on July 5. It features 20+ craft essays offering thoughtful insights from some of the highest rated HippoCamp speakers. It also features wise writers behind some of Hippocampus Magazine‘s most-read craft columns.
Speaking of HippoCamp, they have released the full schedule for this year’s conference set to to take place August 13-15 in Lancaster, PA. As of this writing, there are only 80 spots currently available.
The latest issue of The 2River View, Summer 2021, is out with poems by Ted Kooser, Matthew Freeman, Will Harmon, Sheree La Puma, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Matthew Murrey, Benjamin Nash, Karen June Olson, Charles Rafferty, SM Stubbs, Diane Thiel, and Sally Van Doren.
On Friday, it was announced that poet Natalie Diaz won the Pulitzer for her second book of poems Postcolonial Love Poem. Diaz spoke about her book with The Arizona Republic, saying, “I knew that I wanted my body, the places I’ve come from, the people I come from, to be of consequence to the world and to kind of bring our perspectives and conversations to bear in our larger national conversations.”
Writing on the Indigenous experience, she explains her poetic viewpoint, “I, of course, have an Indigenous lens, but yet I think that Indigenous lens is extremely important to non-Indigenous peoples. We’re all fighting for our water. We’re all fighting for this Earth, for one another against injustice.”
See what else she said about the winning collection here.
Back in October of 2020, we let you know that Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing was launching online literary magazine Good River Review in 2021. Well, the first issue has officially launched!
The first issue features prose by Rigoberto González, Pico Iyer, Brian Leung, Chris Offutt, and Julie Ann Stewart; lyric by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Alan Chazaro, Molly Peacock, Charlotte Pence, J.D. Schraffenberger, Evie Shockley, Katerina Stoykova, and Claire Wahmanholm; and drama by Ifa Bayeza and Kia Corthron.
They also feature book reviews of Dinty W. Moore’s To Hell with It: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante’s Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno; Zadie Smith’s Intimations; and Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth. Under “The Practice of Writing” heading, they feature an excerpt of Felicia Rose Chavez’s Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom.
You will also find interviews with Keven Willmott, Lydia Millet, and Pico Iyer.
Between their biannual issues, they will regularly feature book reviews, interviews, and essays on the practice of writing, along with other important literary news. Swing by their listing on NewPages to learn more and don’t forget to read their inaugural issue!
Their submissions period is open and ongoing and they do accept work written for children and young adults, too! Since they love work that doesn’t fit neatly into genre categories, that is why they publish work under the headings of prose, drama, and lyric.
Want to check out some work by writers from specific regions? Three recent literary magazine issues have you covered.
The Common‘s 21st issue includes a feature on Arabic Stories from Morocco. In this section is translated writing and art from the Hindiyeh Museum of Art by Latifa Labsir, Fatima Zohra Rghioui, Mohamed Zafzaf, and more.
Volume 42 Number 1 of New England Review‘s translation feature is “From Granma to Boston and Havana and Back: Cuban Literature Today.” Here, find work by Víctor Fowler Calzada, Jorge Enrique Lage, Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and others.
And from within the United States, Rattle‘s Summer 2021 issue features twenty-two Appalachian poets. Among these are Ace Boggess, Mitzi Doton, Kari Gunter-Seymour, Raymond Hammond, Elaine Fowler Palencia, and more.
Cutleaf is an online journal published twice monthly. It’ a project of EastOver Press, an independent literary press specializing in collections of short stories, essays, and poetry. The first issue officially launched in February 2021 with “How Gretel Gets Her Groove Back” by Lauren K. Alleyne, “Sliders” by Wesley Browne, and “Eat Before You Go” by E.C. Salibian.
They feature fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and cross-genre work by both new and established writers. Issue 10 published in June 2021 features poetry by George Ella Lyon, fiction by Kevin Fitton, and nonfiction by Matt Muilenberg.
They will reopen to submissions in September 2021. Until then, browse their current issue and their back issues for an idea of what they are looking for.
Stop by their listing on NewPages to learn more.
Whether you can run a marathon doesn’t matter, since this marathon is about writing poetry! And while it’s all community and no competition, that doesn’t mean it’s “easy” to complete. To cross the finish line, participants must write one poem every hour for either 12 hours for one of the two half marathons or 24 hours for the full marathon. Prompts are provided but don’t need to be followed, and it is okay to ‘catch up’ if you can’t post on each hour, but there is no advance posting. Each participant posts their poems on a WordPress login within the group site and can read and respond to others’ poems.
This event is not for the flippant – “Oh yeah, maybe I will try it…” In order to register for the event, you must explain what you plan to do to ‘prepare’ yourself for the day. After several years of completing the half marathon, I have learned it works best to clear my schedule for the day, plan to only do work around the house, and check in at the top of every hour for the new prompt. Sometimes I can respond quickly, and other times, I need more think time, which means setting an alarm to remind myself to post before the hour is up. It is indeed a commitment, and can feel stressful and frustrating at times, but the sense of accomplishment is worth it – having a dozen or two new poems and interacting with about 500 other like-minded poetry lovers from around the globe!
Registration if free and open until June 19. The marathon takes place Saturday, June 26 starting at 9am in the morning. The half marathons run from 9am to 9pm or 9pm to 9am, and the full marathon runs from 9am Saturday until 9am Sunday.
In the table of contents of Arts & Letters latest issue, the heading “Unclassifiable” caught my eye, promising a walk off the beaten path. This section features the winner of the journal’s annual Unclassifiable Contest.
When I paged to this winning piece—”Voidopolis” by Kat Mustatea—I was greeted with a series of photos with accompanying text. This excerpt is from a project Mustatea began on an Instagram page, loosely retelling Dante’s Inferno. Throughout this 46-part series, Mustatea never uses words with the letter “E.” This combined with the format of the photo-sharing app gave me a burst of inspiration to try new things and to challenge myself while doing it.
There is just enough included in the issue to hook the reader along and lead them to check out the rest of the story on Mustatea’s Instagram. The project has ended, so there’s no wait for new readers to reach the conclusion. Step away from the usual, the classifiable, and check out this piece in the Spring 2021 issue of Arts & Letters.
Find the winners of EVENT‘s 2020 Non-Fiction Contest in their latest issue.
First Place
“Our Lives” by Alexis Pooley
Second Place
“Differences” by Madeline Sonik
Third Place
“Sea Monsters Revealed” by Adrienne Gruber
Judge Madhur Anand introduces the winners with an essay on judging nonfiction. Print and digital copies of this issue are available at EVENT‘s website.
Caesura Poetry Workshop aims to support, inspire, educate, and energize poets of all backgrounds through affordable Zoom workshops hosted by award-winning poet, editor, and writing coach John Sibley Williams. Workshops include poem analysis, active group discussion, writing prompts, poem critiques, and plenty of writing time. Come join our growing community! Upcoming classes include Mastering Traditional Forms: Haiku, Sonnet, Ghazal & Pantoum (four sessions in July & August), Marketing Your Small Press Book (August 21, 1-4pm PT), and others. 1-1 personalized workshops, coaching, and manuscript critiques to keep you writing and inspired also available. More information: www.johnsibleywilliams.com/upcoming-classes. To register, email [email protected].