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

Calling all censors!

Tennessee libraries bill graphicTennessee Becomes Second State to Propose ‘Parental Review Boards’ for Public Libraries. Publishers Weekly.

The controversial bills propose to give elected “parental review boards” the power to decide which “age-appropriate” materials can be accessible to minors within a public library, with librarians who don’t comply with the board’s decisions subject to prison time.

“Public librarians around the country are often put in the uncomfortable position of standing up for free speech in their own institutions, and refusing to take down a book simply become some members of the community object,” Tager said. “Apparently the sponsors of this Act feel that this should be treated as criminal conduct when it’s actually librarians simply doing their jobs.”

 

7 Writers to Rediscover This March

women's history month graphic7 Writers to Rediscover This March. Powell’s City of Books Blog.

Women authors, particularly queer authors and authors of color, have frequently been relegated to the dustbin of history while their male contemporaries have been added to the Western canon and taught in classrooms ad infinitum. Some women are successful in their lifetimes, but, overshadowed by their male contemporaries, fall out of print and the collective consciousness after their deaths. Others languish in obscurity during their most prolific years and find recognition only at the end of their lives; or, they are recognized posthumously, when the mores of society catch up with them.

In celebration of Women’s History Month, here are seven authors who were underappreciated in their lifetimes, or who were forgotten and deserve to be better known.

What does the Future Hold for Literary Magazines?

The Writer talks to editors of literary magazines to gain insight into the future of publishing in “What does the future look like for literary magazines?”

The problem is that more people want to get published than want to read.

Print journals have seen a decrease in subscriptions which has cut into already minuscule budgets to produce issues and pay writers. But while subscription numbers can be seen decreasing…submissions are on the upswing.

Take a look at what current editors of both online and print magazines have to say about trying to stay afloat in the precarious world of literary publishing and foraying not only into online-only content, but into other ventures to keep their journals alive.

The Gettsyburg Review – Autumn 2019

Gettysburg Review - Autumn 2019The Autumn 2019 issue of The Gettysburg Review offers readers a great selection of poetry and prose as usual, from Alice Friman’s “Hygiene,” which utilizes breasts as a way to measure time and maturity in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way, to the 55-part essay “A Brief Account of Certain Left-Leaning Tendencies” by Valerie Sayers which highlights her father by using the word “left,” to digestible words of wisdom in three poems by Joyce Sutphen.

But what really left me enamored was the art feature. Nine paintings by Anne Siems grace the pages and cover of this issue. The portraits are whimsical and magical, using creative patterns and images of nature to create portraits that draw viewers in. More little details pop out the longer one looks. People become one with nature—mushrooms cloud around a body in “We Are All Connected,” animal heads sprout from hands like puppets in “Beasts,” antlers grow from the head of an animal-surrounded girl in “Eve Dreams of a Wolf.” These works are gorgeous and give readers a good reason to stick around within the pages of this issue long after they’ve gotten their share of words.

The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review – Fall 2019

Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review - Winter 2019Magazine Review by Katy Haas

I’m ready for spring to hurry up and get here already, so I couldn’t help gravitating toward poems featuring plants in the Fall 2019 issue of The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review.

Tara Bray focuses on plants in all three of her poems: “Inside the Sycamore,” “Milkweed: Doxology,” and “Lemon Verbena.”  She writes with a hushed appreciation and admiration for each of these. There’s a familiarity and softness in her words. She calls the lemon verbena “sister,” she and her family fit themselves inside the sycamore, she feeds off the milkweed, a deep connection tying her to each plant.

This makes me appreciate Brian McDonald’s “Basil,” found on the following page, that much more. He heads in the completely opposite direction, beginning his poem with much less adoration: “Fuck. Another summer of trying to grow / these oily leaves I’ve always let fry / in the heat.” The basil plants lead McDonald to consider his shortcomings: other plants that have died in windowsills and his uncertainty about whether he’s treating his wife how she should be treated. He’s open and honest, deeply human, all with the help of these fragile basil plants.

It will still be cold here in Michigan for at least another month or two, so I definitely appreciate the writers that are able to deliver me from the chilliness and drop me in the middle of a sycamore or a warm backyard, a tray of basil plants in hand.

Advice for the AWP Newbie from an AWP Oldie

brevity blog awp graphicAdvice for the AWP Newbie from an AWP Oldie. By Suzanne Roberts, Brevity Blog.

Pace Yourself. Put together a schedule of things you want to attend, but don’t try to go to a panel in every time slot. Shoot for no more than two panels a day, and try to hit the keynote readings. I can’t tell you how happy I am that I got to see people like W.S. Merwin, Seamus Heaney, Grace Paley, and Dereck Walcott read now that they are gone.  Seeing these luminaries was more memorable than those times I went to a 26-person marathon reading in a crowded bar with bad free beer…

 

2019 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize Winner

The Malahat Review - Winter 2019The Malahat Review annually hosts the Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize. The editors consider submissions of “a genre that embraces, but is not limited to, the personal essay, memoir, narrative nonfiction, social commentary, travel writing, historical accounts, and biography, all enhanced by such elements as description, dramatic scenes, dialogue, and characterization.” The Winter 2019 issue features the 2019 winner, chosen by Judge Yasuko Thanh: “Bat Reign” by Jeanette Lynes.

In an interview, Thanh said she was looking for “A story with a heartbeat, the ring of truth; to be surprised on every page with turn of phrase, or metaphor, or image so apt it’s breathtaking. Insight. A climactic “punchline” in the sense that its timing is perfectly paced and creates a resolution as inevitable as unexpected.”

Pick up a copy of the Winter 2019 issue of The Malahat Review to see how Lynes meets these expectations with “Bat Reign,” and check back in May of this year for details on the 2020 prize.

Don’t be afraid to let children read graphic novels.

new kid graphicDon’t be afraid to let children read graphic novels. They’re real books. By Karen MacPherson, Washington Post.

The kids are on board with comics, and so are many publishers, librarians, teachers and literary award givers. I’m hopeful that still-reluctant parents and educators are coming around. Whenever I encounter resistance, I think of what Robin Brenner, teens librarian at the Public Library of Brookline, Mass., and founder of the “No Flying No Tights” website, said: “Comics are not intended to replace prose. They are just one way to tell a story. But they can be as demanding, creative, intelligent, compelling, and full of story as any book.”

A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it

make money writing graphicA dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it

When students ask me for advice with regard to how to “make it as a writer”, I tell them to get a job that also gives them time and space somehow to write; I tell them find a job that, if they still have it 10 years from now, it wouldn’t make them sad. I worry often that they think this means I don’t think their work is worthy; that I don’t believe they’ll make it in the way that they imagine making it, but this advice is me trying help them sustain themselves enough to make the work I know they can.

‘Her Sister’s Tattoo’ by Ellen Meeropol

Her Sisters Tattoo - Ellen MeeropolBook Review by  Jacqueline Sheehan

I’ve been a fan of Ellen Meeropol’s novels for ten years. Her three previous books merged personal drama with social justice. But not until Her Sister’s Tattoo has Meeropol so masterfully grasped the political strife in our country since the 1960’s. And as a true novelist can do, she allows us to experience the turmoil through the intimate lives of two characters whom we come to know and understand.

Rosa and Esther Levin are caught up in the passion and violence of the anti-war protests of 1968 in Detroit. When protest marchers are bloodied by the mounted police, the sisters spontaneously take an action to distract the police that would seem innocuous, even childlike. They hurl apples at the police. But a horse is spooked and a police officer is horribly injured. In that one moment, their lives change in unimaginable ways, driving a brutal wedge between the two sisters that will endure for decades. The dynamics of loyalty to family and one’s conscience become the battleground for a truly American novel.

Late in the book, (I’m not giving anything away here) a character says, “The Levin sisters taught me it’s not your family that determines who you become. It’s not even your abilities. Your choices define you.”

We all make choices every day that define us, but some of us make choices with more lethal consequences. Will our loyalties reside first with our loved ones, or should we sacrifice even our freedom to a larger belief in what is right? Meeropol pulls back the curtain on the lives of two sisters in the midst of this and by doing so, pulls back the curtain on a history of political activism that reverberates through time. For those with an eye for politics and fiction, Ellen Meeropol’s novel will not disappoint.

Her Sister’s Tattoo by Ellen Meeropol. Red Hen Press, April 2020.

About the reviewer: Jacqueline Sheehan, is a New York Times Bestselling author and a psychologist. Her novels include, The Comet’s Tale a novel about Sojourner Truth, Lost & Found, Now & Then, Picture This, The Center of the World, and The Tiger in the House. She also writes essays including the New York Times column, Modern Love. She is one of the founders and former president of The Straw Dog Writers Guild in Western Massachusetts. She teaches workshops at Writers in Progress in Northampton.

Orson’s Review has a New Website

Orson's Review screenshotBiannual online literary magazine Orson’s Review has a new website. It was formerly included on the website of parent company Orson’s Publishing, but has now branched off on its own.

The new site has a nice, minimalist design to highlight the work published.

All the archives have moved as well so you can read issues one through three on the new site. Plus, you can read interviews with contributors. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive notifications when Issue 4 is released soon.

Rattle – Spring 2020

Rattle - Spring 2020

The Spring 2020 issue of Rattle features a special tribute section of poems written by students of Kim Addonizio’s poetry workshops (as well as one poem by Kim herself). In the open section, the poems themselves are as good as their titles: “The Cow I Didn’t Eat.” “Social Experiments in Which I Am the [Bear].” “Ode to the Mattress on the Side of the Interstate.” Diverse as always, the new issue features a poem written in “the imagined voice of Frida Kahlo” (Barbara Lydecker Crane), “Young Dyke” by Alison Hazle, a duo of triolets by Carolyne Wright, and much more.

New Orleans Review – Winter Spring 2020

New Orleans Review - Winter/Spring 2020

Find out more about the new online version of New Orleans Review. Contributors: Danley Romero, Kaylie Saidin, Britton Hanson, Maria Kuznetsova, Apryl Lee, Diana Valenzuela, Anna Claire Hodge, Ryan Burgess, Rage Hezekiah, Julia Cohen and Lisa Nikolidakis. Cover by Ashley Longshore.

Fiction Southeast – Feb 2020

Fiction Southeast logo

Fiction Southeast publishes work on a rolling basis. Contributors this year include work by Robin Littell, Ziaul Moid Khan, Jason Graff, Marianne Rogoff, Dakota Canon, Vandana Khanna, Andrea Jarrell, Jessica Love, Richard Sogliuzzo, Annie Mountcastle, Kay Sloan, Staci Mercado, and Mike Wilson.

Crossways Literary Magazine – No. 9

Crossways - January 2020

This issue includes poetry by Sinead McClure, Mary Kathryn Jablonski, Timothy Gordan, Beth McDonough, Milton Ehrlich, Breda Joyce, Susie Gharib, Alun Robert, and more; fiction by Patrick Doherty, J. Scott Hardin, Chuck Teixeira, Max Dunbar, and Fiona Billie Lawlor; and a book review by Nicola Spendlove. [no website]

Program :: University of North Carolina Greensboro MFA

UNCG MFA Winter 2020 LitPak FlierApplication Deadline: January 1 (annually)
One of the oldest creative writing programs in the country, UNC Greensboro’s MFA Writing Program offers fully funded graduate assistantships with stipends, tuition remission, and subsidized health insurance. The MFA is a two-year residency program with an emphasis on studio time for the writing of poetry or fiction. Students work closely with acclaimed faculty in one-on-one tutorials and small classes, including courses in contemporary publishing and creative nonfiction. Our campus features a Distinguished Visiting Writers Series of authors and editors; other professionalization opportunities include college teaching and hands-on editorial work for The Greensboro Review. More at mfagreensboro.org and greensbororeview.org.

Event :: Elk River Writers Workshop 2020

2020 Elk River Writers Workshop FlierDeadline: Rolling (July 1 final deadline)
Elk River Arts and Lectures is now accepting applications to our summer writers workshop, August 16–21, at historic Chico Hot Springs Resort, 30 miles from Yellowstone National Park. We host some of the most celebrated nature writers in the United States to work with students in an area of Montana that has inspired the work of conservationists and writers for decades. Workshop classes are limited to 10 students in each genre. This year, Rick Bass, Linda Hogan, and J. Drew Lanham, William Pitt Root, and Pamela Uschuk will serve as our core faculty. Apply via Submittable or visit: elkriverwriters.org.

Program :: Jackson Center for Creative Writing

Hollins University MFA flierApplication Deadline: January 6
For well over sixty years, this highly regarded Hollins MFA has supported lively and determined writers who want to concentrate on craft. Our intensive two-year graduate program helps students find their way in an atmosphere of cooperation and encouragement. Our students work successfully in poetry, short fiction, novels, and creative nonfiction—and in between genres. Our faculty writers take time to work with students in this vibrant, supportive community. Our alums have a remarkably high record of publication. Program provides graduate assistantships, teaching fellowships, travel funding, and generous scholarships. Most of all, a vibrant, supportive community. For information, www.hollins.edu/creative-writing-MFA.

’50 Miles’ by Sheryl St. Germain

50 Miles by Sheryl St. GermainBook Review by Karen J. Weyant

Sheryl St. Germain opens her newest book, 50 Miles, with a simple statement: “My son was born into a family cursed with substance abuse.”

It’s this curse St. Germain explores in her collection of intertwining essays that examine the life, the struggles, and the eventual death of her son, Gray. Along the way, she also looks at her own clashes with addiction, struggles that mirror the demons that haunted many of her family members including her father and her brother. Continue reading “’50 Miles’ by Sheryl St. Germain”

NewPages Book Stand – February 2020

Book Stand - Feb 2020The February 2020 Book Stand is now up at NewPages! Visit for new and forthcoming titles in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, anthologies, and children’s/YA. Our New & Noteworthy section features work from six different presses month.

Diode Editions announces five forthcoming titles this spring: The Last Human Heart by Allison Joseph; Good Timing & Gertrude Stein: Inside Snoopy’s snout maggots feats upon my blood by Julia Cohen; Prismatics: Larry Levis & Contemporary American Poetry: Interviews from the Documentary Film A Late Style of Fire edited by Gregory Donovan and Michele Poulos; Wider Than the Sky from Nancy Chen Long; and The Minister of Disturbances from Zeeshan Khan Pathan. Visit our LitPak for more information.

The People’s Field by Haesong Kwon (Southeast Missouri University Press, October 2019), winner of the Cowles Poetry Prize, reflects on the sounds, ideas and histories of the Korean peninsula with attention to the Japanese occupation and the Korean War and its aftermath.

Juan Herrera invites readers to touch Connie Post’s Prime Meridian (Glass Lyre Press, January 2020) “in order to traverse the present age.”

River Teeth celebrates twenty years of publishing nonfiction with an anthology edited by founding editors Joe Mackall and Daniel W. Lehman (University of New Mexico Press, February 2020).

In Shining Man (Livingston Press, December 2019), Todd Dills “explodes themes of economic opportunity, identity and the individual’s place post-Great Recession in a politically polarized, culturally isolated, and class-stratified America.”

Debut collection A Small Thing to Want by Shuly Xóchitl Cawood (Press 53, May 2020) “chronicles the choices people make about whom to love and whom to let go, their yearnings that either bind them or set them free, and the surprising ways love shows up, without reason or restraint.”

You can learn more about each of these featured titles at our website, and find out how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section here: https://npofficespace.com/classified-advertising/new-title-issue-ad-reservation/.

NewPages Bookstore & Library Mailing Lists

NewPages mailing listsPlanning on marketing your book to indie bookstores and libraries this spring? Let us help you get started. NewPages offers digital and physical mailing lists to bookstores, libraries, and newspapers within the United States. With a new, lower rate on our digital lists and guaranteed delivery to postal addresses, our lists are a great value and a big help getting your book into the hands of booksellers and readers across the country. Visit our website to learn more.

14th Mudfish Poetry Prize Winner & Honorable Mentions

Mudfish - January 2020The newest issue of Mudfish features the winner and honorable mentions of the 14th Mudfish Poetry Prize. The 2019 judge was John Yau.

Winner
“Fluencies” by Mark Wagenaar

Honorable Mentions
“Not Yet Across” by G. Hanlon
“Crossing Lake Pontchartrain” by Stokes Howell

The 15th Mudfish Poetry Prize is currently open until March 15 and will be judged by poet and novelist Erica Jong.

Blink-Ink – True Crime Issue

Blink Ink - Issue 38

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

True crime seems to be all the rage lately, from books on famous cold cases to Netflix documentaries to hit podcasts. Blink-Ink tries its hand at covering this theme in Issue 38 wherein 16 writers use micro-fiction to explore true crime.

JR Walsh writes about a B&E at an ex’s house where the criminals’ “fingerprints never moved out.” Katie Yates writes of a husband who steals a puppy for his wife. In Craig Fishbane’s “Weapon of Choice,” one weapon is social media, the other is a gun. Leah Rogin-Roper provides four related pieces on a juvenile detention center. The stories in this issue cover a wide array of crimes in creative ways, and it’s fun to see a fictional take on truth.

Blink-Ink publishes stories that are 50 words or less. This makes for short, snappy stories that toss readers headfirst into the drama. In this issue, we never have to wait long to find out who did it in these whodunnits.

Terrain.org

Terrain.org February 2020

New this month on Terrain.org, find nonfiction by Sharon Dolin, Cara Stoddard, and Rachel Findlay; fiction by Michael McGuire and John Colman Wood; and poetry by Lex Runciman. Currently featured on the website: the winner of the Terrain.org 10th Annual Contest in Poetry are three poems by Stacey Balkun.

Mudfish – No. 21

Mudfish - January 2020

The newest issue of Mudfish features the winner of the 14th Mudfish Poetry Prize, judged by John Yau: Mark Wagenaar with “Fluencies.” Honorable mentions G. Hanlon and Stokes Howell are also included. Other contributors this issue: Dell Lemmon, Michael Lyle, Aillie McKeever, Beth Suter, Claire Scott, Vincent Bell, Marjorie Power, Angela Dribben, Yuyutsu Sharma, Holly Day, Jason Koo, James Trask, Jake Bauer, Francis Klein, Neal Zirn, Bob Coles, A. Kaiser, Kristin Entler, Tim Nolan, Kirk Wilson, Toni Hanner, and many more.

Missouri Review – Feb 2020

Missouri Review - Winter 2020

Inside our “Liberation” issue, First fiction from Thea Chacamaty and Bradley Babendir on Jewish comic novelists. Featuring Heather Christle, Samantha DeFlitch, Patricia Foster, Catherine Gammon, Terrance Manning Jr., Askold Melnyczuk, John R. Nelson, Anya Silver, and Paul Smith.

The Antioch Review – February 2020

Antioch Review - Fall 2019

The “Atention!” issue of The Antioch Review includes Heinrich Böll’s “Cause of Death: Hooked Nose” (translated by Robert C. Conard) which captures Nobel laureate Boll’s vivid imagery about the corollary of unfettered hatred, unchallenged propaganda, and fearful inertia for countries, communities, and consciences. Rachel Rose’s “Buccal Swab” airs the concerns and realities families face when a member harmlessly hands over DNA to Ancestry.com or some other DNAanalyses company. Stuart Neville’s thriller “Coming in on Time” unfolds in the eyes of a child naïve to passions that stir so strongly and sting so seriously. Find a full list of contributors at The Antioch Review‘s website.

Just a Few Billion Years Left to Go

Until the End of Time graphicUntil the End of Time. Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe By Brian Greene. Book Review, New York Times.

“In the fullness of time all that lives will die.” With this bleak truth Brian Greene, a physicist and mathematician at Columbia University, the author of best-selling books like “The Elegant Universe” and co-founder of the yearly New York celebration of science and art known as the World Science Festival, sets off in “Until the End of Time” on the ultimate journey, a meditation on how we go on doing what we do, why and how it will end badly, and why it matters anyway.

“Until the End of Time” is encyclopedic in its ambition and its erudition, often heartbreaking, stuffed with too many profundities that I wanted to quote, as well as potted descriptions of the theories of a galaxy of contemporary thinkers, from Chomsky to Hawking, and anecdotes from Greene’s own life — of which we should wish for more — that had me laughing.

Women of a Certain Rage

Women of a certain ago jpegWomen of a Certain Rage. Two New Books Tackle Getting Older—and More Pissed Off. Bitchmedia.

…I can’t say whether the despair I regularly feel is statistical or situational—the world is both literally and figuratively on fire, after all; I don’t trust anyone who isn’t despairing on some level. But as a woman, I also know that there can’t be any discussion of unhappiness at any numerical point of what we call “midlife” without acknowledging the powerful cultural narratives of gender and aging.

Those narratives, and the economic, political, sexual, and pop cultural impact of them, are at the center of two new books. Ada Calhoun’s Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis and Susan J. Douglas’s In Our Prime: How Older Women are Reinventing the Road Ahead both approach their subject matter from generational perspectives, each starting from a place of unsettled personal clarity: Well, shit, I got old. Now what? 

Patti Smith awarded PEN Award

Patti Smith jpg2020 PEN/Audible Literary Service Award: Patti Smith. Pen America.

Patti Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has release 12 albums, including Horses, which has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time by Rolling Stone.

Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and was represented by the Robert Miller Gallery for three decades. Her retrospective exhibitions include the Andy Warhol Museum, the Fondation Cartier, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Her books include Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award in 2010, Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, Auguries of Innocence, M Train, and Devotion.

2020 Rainbow Book List

Rainbow Book ListRainbow Book List – GLBTQ Books for Children & Teens

The Rainbow Book List Committee is proud to announce the 2020 Rainbow Book List. The List is a curated bibliography highlighting books with significant gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning content, aimed at children and youth from birth to age 18. This list is intended to aid youth and those working with youth in selecting high-quality books published in the United States of America between July 1, 2018 and December 31, 2019.

This year, our committee has noticed an abundance of genre fiction, as well as books whose plots do not revolve around anxiety concerning a queer character’s identity. Micro trends that we’ve noticed this year have been books about birds or with birds in the title, and books about queer witches. We’ve also seen an increase in books with non-binary, asexual-spectrum, and bisexual characters.

 

“Poet Laureate? Poet Illiterate? What?”

Luis J Rodriguez poet laureateDoes poetry matter? L.A.’s former poet-in-chief Luis J. Rodriguez explains why it’s life changing. Los Angeles Times.

Confusion aside, I felt it was about time “poet laureate” became a household term. The United States now has more poet laureates than ever before. There are poet laureates for states, counties, cities, communities, small towns, and Native American reservations (Luci Tapahonso became the first poet laureate of the Diné Nation). Claudia Castro Luna, a Salvadoran American, served as Seattle’s poet laureate and later held the same post for Washington state. Two Xicanx poets, Laurie Ann Guerrero and Octavio Quintanilla, did the same for San Antonio. Sponsored by New York City–based Urban Word, there is also a Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate (I helped pick two of them) and the first ever National Youth Poet Laureate, eighteen-year-old Amanda Gorman.

…It’s hard to figure out poetry’s worth when there is a hierarchy of “values” hanging over our heads determined not by nature or skill but by powerful men in the publishing, media, and political industries — entities that are about making money. I’m not talking about family values or cool traits. I’m talking net worth, the bottom line: “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”

If that’s the case, poetry should perish.

 

$2 million book deals about the Trump administration are anything but brave

$2 million book deals about the Trump administration are anything but brave. Vox.

The book publishing industry has many problems, but the one I find most chilling as a former book editor who now reports in the industry is that people who have vital information about our democracy are rewarded for putting such info in books rather than coming forward.

For book lovers such as myself, the silver lining of Trump’s election was the possibility that readers would be looking for escapism and big ideas in art. So it’s particularly demoralizing to watch publishers package the ongoing debasement of our country as entertainment. If Trump’s best political weapon is being at the apex of an infotainment media system that is consumed like cable news, then publishers aren’t obligated to play his game.

Poem: At Least

Poem: At Least. By Ha Jin. Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. New York Times Magazine.

In a wry poem of direct counsel, Ha Jin dismisses obligatory mingling and networking. He’s talking to himself or to any of us, as the poem quietly advises and reasons. “A Distant Center,” Ha Jin’s profoundly appealing collection of poems written in Chinese, then translated by the author into English, contains so many breathtaking cleanses-of-spirit — begone bombast and posturing! Reading it is better than going to a spa. The title of this poem adds another encouraging nod to the topic. We may not know everything, but “at least” this.

“…Look, this skyful of stars,
which one of them
doesn’t shine or die alone?
Their light also comes
from a deep indifference.”

‘Real censorship’: Roxane Gay responds to American Dirt death threat row

Roxane Gay jpg‘Real censorship’: Roxane Gay responds to American Dirt death threat row. The Guardian.

The author argues the debate around Jeanine Cummins’ controversial novel shows how people are threatened for ‘daring to have opinions’

Gay, who explained that she receives death threats every week, and pays for a security service to monitor and protect her, said that it was “important to acknowledge the death threats people receive for daring to have opinions, for daring to be black or brown or queer or disabled or women or trans or any marginalised identity”.

“People need to realise what real censorship looks like. They need to understand how unsafe it can be to challenge authority and the status quo,” she said. “These are not things that should be taken lightly, nor should this level of harassment be dismissed as mere trolling. You never know when one of those so-called trolls is going to take his rage from the internet into the physical world.”

How to Raise a Reader

How to Raise a Reader jpgHow to Raise a Reader (Does Anyone Actually Know?) BookRiot.

From what I can tell, the advice from these books can be distilled into three main points. One, read to your children, all the time, for as long as you can (even after they can read for themselves). Two, surround them with books and make books easily accessible. Borrow books from the library, buy books new, buy books secondhand, whatever it is — just have books at home. And three, model reading to them. One of the best ways to raise readers is to be a reader yourself, and let your child see that.

But thinking about these tips and advice also made me wonder: how effective are these tips? Can readers be made or are they born? The rest of these musings are exactly that: musings based on anecdotes and in no way on rigorous scientific research but it’s interesting to ponder.

How to Write Fiction When the Planet Is Falling Apart

Weather by Jenny OffillHow to Write Fiction When the Planet Is Falling Apart. New York Times Magazine.

Jenny Offill is the master of novels told in sly, burnished fragments. In her latest, ‘Weather,’ she uses this small form to address the climate collapse.

In 2005, the naturalist Robert Macfarlane asked, in an influential essay in The Guardian: “Where is the literature of climate change? Where are the novels, the plays, the poems, the songs, the libretti, of this massive contemporary anxiety?” How should we understand the paucity of the cultural response to climate change, he asked, compared with the body of work catalyzed by the threat of nuclear war? In recent years, however, planetary collapse has emerged as a dominant concern in contemporary fiction…

The climate crisis, Offill shows, is reshaping not just our world but also our minds. “Weather” joins other new fiction in transforming the novel of consciousness into a record of climate grief. “Sometimes I think that people today must be the saddest people ever, because we know we ruined everything,” the heroine of Lucy Ellmann’s “Ducks, Newburyport” thinks.

‘What Could Possibly Go Wrong?’ Edited by Richard Peabody

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Book Review by Katy Haas

As a writer who is very prone to anxiety and stage fright, I’ve always turned down the opportunity to participate in readings. I can’t help running all the worst case scenarios through my head. This led me to picking up my copy of What Could Possibly Go Wrong? the pocket-sized anthology edited by Richard Peabody, featuring 36 writers sharing their own readings gone wrong.

The anthology starts off on a more serious note. Brett Axel’s reading devolves into a protest as police crash it, assuming the worst of teenage attendees. Abby Bardi’s publicity tour ends prematurely as it coincides with 9/11.

But a majority of these horror stories are less serious and more humorous. Mark Baechtel walks himself into a corner with one bad decision he commits to. Barbara Esstman has a selection of not one but four bad readings, and, luckily, she approaches each of them with levity. Alma Katsu is interrupted by a loud cheerleading practice. Both good weather and bad weather interfere with multiple readings. Tim Wendel must compete against the midnight release of his nemesis: Harry Potter.

Each writer presents their story with lightness and humor. Things didn’t go as planned, but they made it through and are still around writing and participating in more readings. I now find some comfort in the seemingly universality of readings gone awry. Sure, things might go wrong, but at least the experience will be there to laugh at (and possibly write about) later.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Edited by Richard Peabody. Paycock Press, 2019.

True Story – No. 34

True Story - Issue 34

The single-author True Story has released a new issue. In “Plume: An Investigation” by Mary Heather Noble, a former environmental investigator applies her forensic skills to a family mystery. What happens to us when we are exposed to toxicity, both literally and figuratively? Can we change what we pass on to our kids? And at what cost?

Plume – February 2020

Plume - February 2020

Plume‘s February 2020 issue features selection is “Engraved Phrases on Open Seas: Poems and Notes on Translations of Khal Torabully” by Nancy Naomi Carlson. Charles Simic pens an “Essay on the Prose Poem,” and Mark Wagenaar reviews Mark Irwin’s Shimmer. Poets in this issue include Sawnie Morris, William Logan, Mary Jo Salter, Mark Irwin, Kim Addonizio, Andrea Cohen, Adam Scheffler, and more.

The Main Street Rag – Winter 2020

The Main Street Rag - Winter 2020

The Main Street Rag Winter 2020 issue includes featured interview “Living for the Day” with Laura Thurston by Richard Allen Taylor. Also in this issue, find fiction by Nancy Bourne, Michael Gaspeny, Nick Gardner, Don Stoll, Laurence Levey, and Michael Washburn; poetry by Joan Bauer, Ace Boggess, Les Brown, Brian Fanelli, Mary Alice Dixon, Sean Thomas Doherty, Vicki Mandel-King, Gerard Sarnat, Sibani Sen, Young Smith, and more; plus a selection of five book reviews.

Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review – 2020

Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review - Winter 2019

This year’s issue of HSPR is a collection of small things–the way the small things, the things we could almost overlook, often drive art as much as larger considerations. Our 4×4 section this year continues the theme – Richard Kenney, Tobi Kassim, Jessica Fisher and Stephanie Burt all weigh in on the role of small things in both making poems and appreciating them. Contributors include Jena Le, Sandra Lim, KE Duffin, Mary Cisper, Anna Tomlinson, Adam Tavel, Jonathan Wike, Tobi Kassim, and more. A changed logo, different paper, and new fonts are also small physical changes readers can note in this issue.

Carve Magazine – Winter 2020

Carve Magazine - Winter 2020

The Winter 2020 issue of Carve Magazine features short stories by and interviews with Alissa Hattman, Emily Howorth, Sam Simas, and Kate Arden McMullen; poetry by Lucia Orellana Damacela, Jessica Hincapie, Cindy Juyoung Ok, and E. Kristin Anderson; and nonfiction by Brittany Coppla and Joel Clotharp. Additional features include Decline/Accept with “Fit” by Rayne Ayers-Debsksi, a “One to Watch” interview with Brandon Taylor by Anna Zumbahlen, and illustrations by Justin Burks.

Call & Event :: Columbus State University Creative Writers Conference 2020

Columbus State University is accepting panel and workshop proposals for its 2020 Creative Writers Conference through February 15. Consider attending the event taking place October 24 in Columbus, GA. Learn more…

Patti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books

Year of the MonkeyPatti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books. Brain Pickings.

In Year of the Monkey  — her unclassifiable, symphonic exploration of dreams, love, loss, and mending the broken realities of life — Patti Smith recounts how her local childhood library nurtured her inner life, tilling the soil of her becoming.

In consonance with that lovely parenthetical line from one of Nikki Giovanni’s poems celebrating libraries and librarians — “(You never know what troubled little girl needs a book.)” — Smith writes of the endearing, almost unreasonable devotion with which she sought solace for her nine-year-old troubles amid the stacks.

Event :: Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop 2020

Los Angeles Review of Books 2020 Publishing WorkshopEvent Dates: July 5–24, 2020; Los Angeles
Applications are open for the Summer 2020 Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop: July 5–24, 2020 at Emerson College’s L.A. campus. Scholarship deadline is extended to March 30; all applications now due by April 13. For more information and to apply, visit thepublishingworkshop.com.

‘The Way of the Wind’ by Francine Witte

Way of the Wind by Francine WitteGuest Post by Arya F. Jenkins

In The Way of the Wind, poet and writer Francine Witte’s sparse but packed novella in flash, loss has a dozen names and belongs as much to the present as the past. After being dumped by her boyfriend of five years, the narrator, Lily, finds herself not only overwhelmed with grief but with the memory of other losses and, as she tries to work through them, takes the reader on a frantic, all-too familiar journey.

The Way of the Wind is divided into short, emotionally-charged chapters that grip from the start. Bitter wit provides respite throughout: “Love is a lot like tennis, you know? The ball is everything. Everything. If you’re not watching it, you might as well be sipping tea.”

As is true in the work of any masterful flash fiction writer, the only thing the reader can count on here is the unexpected. As Witte takes the reader on a bumpy ride full of emotional twists, highs and lows, the angst and dramedy feel familiar; the ache, all too real. Lily tries everything to escape her pain, going over the “ifs,” making excuses for the other, fantasizing to keep from acknowledging that her biggest fear—abandonment—has come to pass. The only way out of grief and loss, the narrator seems to suggest, is by uniting with what there is—other humans who care, and acceptance.

The Way of the Wind by Francine Witt. Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019.

Arya F. Jenkins is a poet and writer whose prose has been recently published in About Place Journal, Across the Margins, Cleaver Magazine, Eunoia Review, Five on the Fifth, Flash Fiction Magazine, Metafore Literary Magazine, and Vol. 1 Sunday Stories Series. Her fiction has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Her latest poetry chapbook, Love & Poison, was published by Prolific Press in November 2019, and her short story collection Blue Songs in an Open Key (Fomite, 2018) is here: www.aryafjenkins.com.