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!
Chinese Literature Today Volume 9 Number 1 features short science fiction by Liu Cixin, Isaac (Shuntang) Hsu, and Dung Kai-cheung; an exploration of Xu Zechen’s urban fiction; a novella by Li Jing; and a look at diverse works by Sinologist Michael Berry.
The Summer 2020 issue of Baltimore Review features work by Chera Hammons, Anita Olivia Koester, John Haggerty, Seth Grindstaff, Katy Mullins, Cara Lynn Albert, Dennis Cummings, Marlene Olin, Kathleen Melin, Kate Gale, Jehanne Dubrow, and more.
Rockvale Review was founded in 2017 as an online journal devoted to “bold and vulnerable poetry.” They publish work from new, emerging, and established writers and feature image-driven poems that are hard-edged and finely crafted. They do offer optional print editions of their issues which are released in May and November of each year.
They have a unique feature where every poem accepted for publication is paired with a piece of art created by a Featured Artist. A Featured Musician will also craft music to respond to several of the poems in each issue. In doing so, Rockvale Review produces a journal that speaks beyond words, moving into the visual and auditory layers of the human spirit.
Their sixth issue was published in May 2020 and features work by Travis Stephens, Ivo Drury, Kate Deimling, Shannon Wolf, M.G. Hofmann, Wendy Drexler, and more. Stop by their listing at NewPages to learn more.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
From Issue 38 of Bellevue Literary Review, Kathi Hansen’s “We the Mothers” (honorable mention in the 2020 BLR Prize) imagines the mothers of boys who have been accused of sexual assault. They meet together in book-club-like fashion, able to speak freely with one another when no one else understands.
Hansen writes of them in a collective. They speak of their sons as one being as they look back to their childhoods, their teenage years, and the ways their boys were raised in their homes. Only when one woman begins to question her son’s innocence does the story diverge, separating her from the rest of the group, finally naming her apart from the others. I found this to be a cool, well done device for this piece, and a unique point of view to have on these now familiar stories.
Despite focusing on this side of the story, Hansen does a good job of avoiding too much sentimentality. The mothers tell their collective story without demanding understanding or sympathy from the reader. After all, as they point out, only those in their group can truly understand.
Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson
Witness.
Fred Marchant views the inexplicable and gives us the air it breathed in his poems in Said Not Said. I have been looking at this book, reading it, studying with Marchant, and looking at it again for the past three years. Most of that time I worked as a graveyard-shift custodian cleaning university buildings. Now, I live at my parents’ and take care of the both of them during the days of the pandemic. What Marchant sees in his life is revealed in this book. He sees what is not fair. He sees reality but events he cannot control. Here we are in 2020: sitting ducks. Marchant’s poems get into the feeling of this but also access the profound stability of peace and understanding. In “Fennel” he writes:
At the end maybe you were thinking
of Whitman and his claim that dying
was luckier than we had supposed.
Or not. Or not. Here is the bee . . .
Marchant shows us that nature with a capital N intercedes, maybe not to change the course of events he witnesses, but to carry an event to another place, a different emotion. Continue reading “Witness. Vulnerable. Mystery.”
Spring 2021 Application Deadline: December 1
The MA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing offers students an opportunity to develop their writing in a variety of genres (including screenwriting) and to work with the writers sponsored by the Stokes Center for Creative Writing. The Stokes Center enhances the English department’s offerings in creative writing by sponsoring readings, lectures, forums, community projects, and other events that are free and open to the public. It also supports students through its undergraduate and graduate awards in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. A number of competitive scholarships are available to augment the assistantships and tuition waivers such as summer creative writing awards for work on individual projects. For students who enroll full time, the MA in English can be completed in four semesters. Students also have the option of enrolling part time and/or completing the degree through evening coursework. Come develop your craft in a diverse and vibrant city near world-class beaches.
Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson
Rereading The Intangibles by Elaine Equi, during the pandemic, it suddenly reads like a meditation, yet it was published “before” in 2019. Well, it matches the feeling of ennui of the pandemic, police brutality, and the more overarching panic of the climate crisis. This is also true of a lot of poetry I read now, Because of my state of mind, and I am sure others would agree (desperate/bored/searching/hopeful/raw/terrorized), we are also mesmerized by poetry and what poets have to say.
What Equi has to say in The Intangibles is as straightforward as she’s always been. From her titular poem: “Prove you’re not a robot / Answer the question: / What color is the silver basket?”
Her poems are directed outwards but also fold endlessly in on themselves. They are playful in their sense of what it feels like to be confined, in quarantine, yes, and even before the quarantine period we are currently in even happened. From her poem “Faces” we see ourselves and others in a bleak, yet hopeful way: “I love to watch / the dough of faces / flower.”
This book slays with amazing titles. Here are some: “Deep In The Rectangular Forest,” “Ode To Weird,” “Ghosts and Fashion,” “Home On The Range” (okay, not such a weird title, but a very exquisite and wonderful poem), “Granular Time/Granular Distance,” and “Looking Out The Window In A Novel.”
Each of these poems blossoms into a novel (and not a virus).
The Intangibles by Elaine Equi. Coffee House Press, 2019.
Reviewer bio: Susan Kay Anderson’s first book of poems is Mezzanine, from Finishing Line Press, 2019. She also has work forthcoming in Sleet, and another book from Finishing Line Press. She lives in Oregon.
Guest Post by Eron Henry
Information and news are increasingly weaponized. While not new, the weaponization of news and information has been set on steroids by the rise of social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their counterparts in other countries, such as in Russia and China, have become the main source of news for citizens.
It is in and through social media that propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation thrive. The first, propaganda, is a way to tell one’s own story and can be used for good or ill. Advertising, for instance, is a form of propaganda. The second, misinformation, is false and faulty news that need not be deliberately false but can be harmful. The last, disinformation, is the deliberate spreading of false and misleading news and information with the intention to create confusion and cause harm.
Because social media is now the most widely used source of news and information, persons become easily misled and fooled because social media is a fertile breeding ground for misinformation and disinformation.
In Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It, Richard Stengel tells how false and faulty news is now normalized. The former editor of Time Magazine, Stengel was recruited by the State Department during the Obama Administration to counter misinformation and disinformation, especially those put out by Russia and ISIS, the terrorist group.
It was a Byzantine experience. An admixture of outdated technology, ill-prepared and ill-informed government officials and workers, turf wars, career ambitions, ego, and more, got in the way of countering the coordinated and concerted attack on truth and facts, both within the United States and globally.
Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It by Richard Stengel. Atlantic Books, October 2019
Reviewer bio: Eron Henry is a communications consultant. He blogs at https://oletimesumting.com.
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Guest Post by Laura Kincaid
Lacrimore by SJ Costello explores our relationship with grief and tragedy through a speculative lens. The gothic novel draws readers in with beautifully dark prose that builds a haunting world. While the story unfolds slowly, the flawed characters and mystery compel readers to turn the page.
The novel opens with Sivre Sen, a faithless medium journeying across a stormy lake to a small island. There sits Lacrimore, a crumbling labyrinth of a mansion shrouded by legends. During a vision, a ghost called her there to complete his funeral rites. In Costello’s Victorian-inspired world, mediums are revered and influential, especially after a recent epidemic. However, Sen has never before experienced visions of the dead. After arriving, she meets the dead man (who is still alive), a staff trapped by circumstances, and a dubious doctor in exile. As Sivre searches the house for answers and closure, she discovers dark secrets in its rotting walls. The book is like Lacrimore itself—a quiet, mysterious tale standing alone in a much larger world.
Though in development before the COVID-19, the novel was a poignant and refreshing take on pandemic literature. Instead of focusing on dystopian survival, the story centers on what happens after survival. How do we process our grief? How do we reflect on the societal failures that came to light? What change is required to be better? Lacrimore doesn’t claim to answers all these questions. It remains a spooky story that is fun to read, but opens the door for those who want to ponder its deeper themes.
Lacrimore by SJ Costello. June 2020.
Reviewer bio: Laura Kincaid is a writer, editor, and lover of the fantastical. Find her work in Twist in Time and at laurakincaidmusings.wordpress.com.
Guest Post by Brian Phillip Whalen
I’m rereading Peter Orner’s collection of essays, Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live. (What a title! I’m also rereading Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone.) Orner’s essays are ideal stay-at-home reading—easy-to-digest, elegantly composed—and his sparing prose is second-to-none at conveying depths of feeling in few words. The result is a perfectly-paced, heartfelt, sad, funny, and breathtaking book.
Orner seamlessly blends craft analysis (examinations of Chekhov, Welty, Malamud, Hurston, Wideman, Kafka, and scores of other writers) with memoir (stories of fathers, children, love, loss, joys, regrets, the pleasures—and solitude—of reading). Each essay is inspired by an act of reading, prompting explorations into the ways in which the books we read inform, intersect with, and sometimes mirror our lives:
It gets me every time. The way a story about characters, nonexistent people, pushes us back to our own, the people who do exist, who do walk the earth.”
It’s Orner’s voice, however, that draws me in. Though I’ve never met him, the feeling I get reading his essays is akin to sharing stories of hurt and redemption with an old friend over a cold beer, sitting on lawn chairs in the yard at sunset.
We have all done things we wish we could erase, forever, from the record. No matter how we airbrush our histories, the hurt we have caused will, always, reach out for us—like for me today—out of the December rain.”
Orner’s objective was to write about literature that “rattles the soul,” and in so doing, he amassed a collection of essays that continues to rattle mine. This is my go-to recommendation for readers wanting bite-size, ruminative literary essays—and these days, for anyone looking, as the title beckons, for some company in isolation.
Am I Alone Here? by Peter Orner. Catapult, 2016.
Reviewer bio: Brian Phillip Whalen’s debut collection of fiction, Semiotic Love [Stories], will be released in 2021 (Awst Press). Find him here: www.brianphillipwhalen.com.
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There is still a few days left to submit your application to the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Eastern Kentucky University. The Bluegrass Writers Studio offers one of the most affordable and progressive low-residency programs in the nation.
They offer a close-knit and supportive writing community, are devoted to their students creative and professional success, and are supportive of both literary and literary genre writing. The program offers online workshops conducted with live audio, intensive residency workshops, international literary and cultural experiences, and web-based courses in contemporary literature. Students also have the option of working on Jelly Bucket, the annual graduate-student-produced literary journal.
To be considered for their Fall 2020 program, applications need to be received by August 1. To start their program in spring, applications need to be received by December 1.
Guest Post by Joshua Lindenbaum
When one thinks of courage, they usually think about someone going into a burning building to save a person’s life; however, Dr. Brené Brown provides a unique, much-needed lens in which to view bravery in a broader sense in her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. The writing is a beautiful concert of personal anecdotes alongside empirically-based research. Furthermore, Dr. Brown reveals not-so-flattering details about herself, and therefore lives the practices in which she details in her book. It is a lovely trident of logos, pathos, and ethos designed to pierce into the stubbornness of convention and tradition, especially amongst men who have been taught to not show emotions.
This incredibly organized text uproots widely-held beliefs, such as “vulnerability is weakness.” On the contrary, in her previous book The Gifts of Imperfection, Dr. Brown declares, “vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.” She defines ” . . . vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure,” which comprises everyday life, especially during this pandemic. That’s what I think many readers will appreciate about her work: Brown manages to quantify concepts like vulnerability, shame, and even joy. She includes accounts from her own qualitative research alongside a panoply of reliable sources. In addition to providing background, there are also practical steps in, for example, fostering trust. For instance, there’s a section on “the marble jar,” a metaphor used to help us in assessing whether an individual is trustworthy or not based upon specific criteria. This approach allows one the ability to express themselves while also creating boundaries against those that don’t deserve our trust.
I know what you’re thinking: this sounds like a corny self-help book. You are wrong. It is a humanity book. Step into its pages!
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown. Avery/Penguin Random House, April 2015.
Reviewer bio: Joshua Lindenbaum’s poetry has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Breadcrumbs, Yes Poetry, The Bangalore Review, Five:2:One, 3Elements Review, Typishly, and elsewhere.
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Guest Post by Caroline V.D.
As a first timer being introduced into the world of Rizzoli and Isles’s grisly world, I found myself left exposed to the intensity and intricately woven plot in Tess Gerritsen’s addition.
In I Know a Secret, we are pushed straight into the unfortunate murder of Cassandra Coyle, an indie filmmaker and are soon greeted with Rizzoli and Isles. For those like me who are meeting the two strong women quite late into the series, Gerritsen does a wonderful job in establishing familiarity and understanding of their characters as the murder investigation goes on. The characters throughout the book all contribute to the tension and suspense in deducing the culprit’s motives and next actions, as the number of bodies pile up and pasts uncovered. There are no moments that are wasted and no conversations that do not provide a twist to the story, as Coyle’s colleague says “Horror 101 . . . it’s always the person you least expect.”
The symbolism and messages throughout the story are consistent and well placed by Tess Gerritsen who had impressively created an impression of a web laid out by a culprit who could not be traced yet by the end of the book; the web could be followed into a single string as the culprit’s motives are laid out to the reader. It is an amazing feat done by Gerritsen who I commend for roping in another reader into her series!
I Know a Secret: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen. Penguin Random House, April 2018.
Reviewer bio: Hey all, it’s Caroline, and I am an aspiring book reviewer. Currently I’m working on a personal project where you’ll be seeing me and a lot more books in the future. Check it out at: https://theladywithinkstainedhair.tumblr.com/.
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Mills College is now offering a new kind of MFA in creative writing that enables its students to earn a degree in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction in their own way.
Along with offering more traditional classroom-based workshops and craft classes, Mills College also offers the ability to complete the degree by working one-on-one with a faculty mentor. This allows students to be on campus as much or as little as they desire. They are also expanding the amount of online offerings available during summer and January terms.
The program offers concentrations in education, literary arts administration, PhD preparation, and young adult fiction. Students can also create their own unique concentration with electives in podcasting, performance, and pedagogy. They offer a literary editing and production course that gives students hands on experience in editing their annual graduate journal 580 Split.
Stop by their listing on NewPages to learn more about their program.
New in July on Terrain.org, find poety by Kim Parko, Anna B. Sutton, Dean Rader, and Andrea Cohen; nonfiction by Meg Mills-Novoa, Jason BreMiller, Samantha Scibelli, and Lucy Bryan; and fiction by Susan M. Gaines. Plus, Matthew Cooperman reviews Joshua McKinney’s Small Sillion.
In this issue find nonfiction by Charlotte Taylor Fryar and A. Molotkov; fiction by Kim Bradley, Judith Dancoff, Janis Hubschman, Jeff McLaughlin, and Ann Russell; and poetry by Joseph Bathanti, James Ciano, Bryce Lillmars, Esther Lin, Derek Mong, Christina Olson, Lee Peterson, L. Renée, Kristin Robertson, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Wesley Sexton, and Annie Wodford. Find more info at the Southern Humanities Review website.
The latest issue of Radar Poetry features new poetry by Patrick Deeley, Dante DiStefano, Sarah Dravec, Maggie Graber, Strummer Hoffston, and more. Artwork by Michael Boehnker, Danielle Kerese, Honour Mack, Karyna McGlynn, and others.
Issue 38 of the Bellevue Literary Review (BLR) came together just as NYC and Bellevue Hospital were in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the BLR staff were alternating N95 masks with red pens, balancing patient-care with literary work. But the issue made it to the presses and is packed with good reads. It features the winners of the 2020 BLR Literary Prizes. The poems, essays, and stories in this issue travel from China to Texas to Tehran, from small town to big city, from World War I-era to the present. Stay tuned for Issue 39, coming in the fall, whose theme is “Reading the Body.” Read more at the Bellevue Literary Review website.
The creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University is distinguished as one of the only interdisciplinary programs for creative writing in the country. They provide a rich space for exploring relationships between poetry and poetics, experimental prose, cultural translation, community service, pedagogy and contemporary arts. Their goal is to nourish the development of rigorous and imaginatively engaged writing.
Rosie Stockton, who graduated from their MA program in 2017 is currently pursuing their PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles. Rosie has become the recent winner of the Sawtooth Prize. Their book Permanent Volta will be published soon by Nightboat Books.
Christina-Marie Sears, current blog writer/admin staffer for EMU’s online journal BathHouse sat down with Stockton to discuss their work, current practice, and time at Eastern Michigan University.
One of my daily rituals is- I get up and I journal. It’s not narrative. Journaling for me is a stream-of -consciousness and image-focused practice. I have a really active dream life and I just wake up and write before I even look at my phone, but of course on some days that doesn’t always work.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Emily Steinberg takes a walk “In the Woods” with her dog, Gus, in her visual narrative found in the Midsummer 2020 issue of Cleaver. During her walk, she focuses on Gus and her surroundings, reflecting on the way the real world and its real problems seem far away. In the woods, “All human makings disappear . . .” and there is only the sounds of the wind in the trees and the creek and Gus’s paws around her. This moment doesn’t last forever, though. She has to cross the threshold back into the real world where everything “comes sweeping back. Crowding my brain. Not letting me breathe.” But for a moment there is peace.
This short visual narrative gives readers a moment of peace as well as we soak in the quiet moment of respite along with Steinberg. Each panel features only Gus, a fluffy scribble of a dog padding through the woods, a dog always good comfort when it’s needed. The piece works as a good reminder to take a moment to find calm and quiet in the midst of the tragedies and turmoil swirling around us. By taking these moments, we’re able to recharge as we head back into the real world to face everything once more.
That’s right! Literary magazine Creative Nonfiction‘s Fall 2020 online writing courses are open to enrollment. They offer courses for writers of all levels from those just starting out to the more advanced. All courses will begin on September 7. If you sign up by August 15, you will save $50. If you have a buddy you want to do these courses with, you could save an additional $25.
Courses include a Creative Nonfiction Boot Camp, Introduction to Audio Podcasting & Storytelling, Magazine Writing, The Building Blocks of the Personal Essay, Writing for Change: The Study & Craft of Environmental Writing, Advanced Memoir: From First Sentence to Resolution, Advanced Personal Essay: Finding a Way Through, and Advanced Science Writing.
Learn more about all their courses and how to sign up at their website.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Say, “I see dead people,” to just about anyone, and they’ll likely be able to name the movie it came from. But unlike Haley Joel Osment’s character in The Sixth Sense, attempting to help the dead find peace, Jasmine, the narrator in Catherine Stansfield’s “I See Dead People and Other Gags” uses the concept to help herself.
Jasmine tells people she can speak to their dead loved ones, and uses social media to glean information that she later uses in her sessions. Having lost her own mother at a young age and never really speaking about it again gives her a detachment from death and the sentimental feelings surrounding it, so she profits off other people’s pain and grief. However, at the end of the story, she’s hit with a surprise that may make her change her mind about her career path.
I would’ve enjoyed reading more about Jasmine and her work, getting to know more about her clients and her grandmother who casts a shadow over her mother’s death. Stansfield’s writing style is matter of fact and straight forward, fitting for Jasmine’s no-nonsense character. But what we are given is a fun read, a peak behind the medium’s curtain.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
March and the beginning of lockdowns in the United States somehow seems like it was years ago and just days ago. Time continues to slip by in strange ways. Emma Moran touches upon this in her nonfiction piece “What I Will Say” found in the Summer 2020 issue of Sky Island Journal: “Times had changed. The quality of time had changed. Hours extended and compressed. Two hours talking to your sister passed in ten minutes. Ten minutes extended into days, as you listened to the clock counting out the seconds you couldn’t sleep through.”
In this piece, she reflects on her dad’s instruction to “Remember this. One day your grandchildren will ask what it was like, living through this. Remember it all, so you can tell them.” In the following four paragraphs she explains the way life changed during the first few months of the pandemic, and she does so poetically and eloquently: “People built fortresses out of plans. I will write those letters, I will train the dog, I will learn to speak French, I will learn to knit, I will learn, I will learn. We would try to learn.”
Time continues to pass and the push to return to the normal life we used to know is insistent, but Moran remembers and gives a reminder of what we did for others and how we “learned; how we changed” during those first few weeks and months, writing with a thoughtful and sympathetic voice.
Guest Post by Jaimie Hanson
Creativity. Merriam-Webster defines creativity as “the ability to create.” In Called to Be Creative, author Mary Potter Kenyon not only writes about creativity, what it is, what it means, how it affects and benefits us mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually, but she does so by graciously giving the reader a glimpse into her own life throughout the book. This book will grant the permission we often feel we need to be a little (or a lot) creative, and you will be inspired and encouraged, for yourself, and I dare say for others in your circle, as you read through the pages. The chapters, each with their own creative focus, are supported by research and resources throughout the book and the easy-to-do exercises at the end of each chapter allow for the very guidance and reference we seek. Write in the margins, underline the ah-ha moments that speak to you, and get your creative self active.
Called to Be Creative, whether read individually or with a group (yes, even a Zoom group), belongs in everyone’s hands. It’s a book club book, a girlfriends group book, a book for those who are single or married, it’s even a book for guys (and dare I say it would be a fun challenge to create a space and opportunity for that to happen!). It’s perfect for families, for creative minds and those who don’t see themselves that way. A teaching tool for young moms, homeschool moms, and moms looking for a way to cure summer boredom. Add this book to your reading list, discover or uncover the creativity within you, embrace the creative opportunities, and be ready to be amazed as you laugh and smile, enjoying the creative moments within your everyday journey.
Called to be Creative by Mary Potter Kenyon. Workman, August 2020.
Reviewer bio: Jaimie Hanson lives in the Midwest with her family. She enjoys writing and photography. You can find her sharing both on her blog at jelizabethhanson.com.
Guest Post by Christina Francine
Is making a living worth risking life and reputation? For Au Toy during the American Gold Rush, it was. There isn’t another way. When her abusive husband dies from consumption on the journey by ship from China in 1849, Au is left with her freedom, but without a way to support herself.
The price women pay for independence and safety historically is high. Many women used the only resource they had – their body. For Au Toy, her choices are even more limited due to her bound feet. Not wanting to subject herself to sex work, Au opens a “Lookee shop” instead. The San Francisco bay held unspeakable danger though, especially when Au is “fragile” and “dainty,” twenty years-old, and “varmints” and “ruffians” fill the streets. Her loyal servant, Chen, is big and strong, yet the two need safer accommodations. Mining camps spring up and more men than women roam the area. Au has to be careful with who she allows inside her shanty to look at, but not touch her naked body. When one of her observing customers is a policeman from New York assigned to protect the area, he unnerves her. Ever careful, she works to not encourage him or any of her clients. And yet, John Clark’s gentle nature and soft voice give her pause. He tells her “You are so very lovely, Mrs. Toy. Your skin is like alabaster, your hair like spun silk.” He agrees to pass by regularly on his round for her safety. John Clark warms Au and yet she’s not sure exposing her heart is a good idea. She may never recover.
Grossenbacher’s Madam in Silk is a suspenseful romance to be sure, but also a treat for those longing to travel through history. She captures the essence of people, time-period, setting, and historical events perfectly. Her dedicated research is obvious. She also captures the dangers and stigma women face in order to make a living no matter the time in history. Though a historical account, the situation unfortunately exists present day. Grossenbacher reminds readers of humankind’s ability for cruelty and evil, but also for kindness and love. A heartwarming novel intricately plotted with historical data. A valuable exploration too of how women, especially foreign women, fit into the larger scheme of Gold-Rush history.
Madam in Silk by Gini Grossenbacher. Jgks Press, July 2019.
Reviewer bio: Christina Francine is an enthusiastic author for all ages. She is the author of Special Memory (picture book) and the Mr. Inker series (leveled readers). Journal of Literary Innovation published her analysis on students’ writing across the nation Spring 2016. She believes individual learning style may solve world problems.
Guest Post by M.G. Noles
Published in English in 1993, Practicalities is a rare peek inside the mind of the elusive French author, Marguerite Duras. As the author of some of the greatest French novels of the twentieth century (The Lover, Hiroshima, Mon Amour), Duras’ work has a spellbinding effect on the reader. With a hypnotic prose style unlike any other, she is at once strikingly realistic and dreamily meditative. As a lifelong fan of Duras, I was trepidatious about what to expect from this lesser known work.
But now, after having spent the day reading Practicalities, I have to say that it is stunning! The book is in fact a brief series of transcribed discussions the author had with interviewer Jerome Beaujour, and these discussions were compiled into the present book and translated by Barbara Bray.
In free-form, avant-garde style, Duras discusses everything from her love affair with alcohol to her life in French Indochina. She speaks about her approach to writing and her hatred for being often misinterpreted by critics and “fans.” She talks brilliantly about everything from surviving the war to the details of housekeeping.
Practicalities is a real treat for Duras fans and for anyone who wants an incisive mind’s perspective on the art of writing.
Practicalities by Marguerite Duras. Grove Atlantic, August 1992.
Reviewer bio: M.G. Noles is a freelance writer and history buff.
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This month’s Book Stand is now up at our website. We have five new featured titles, and plenty of new and forthcoming books to add to your to-read list.
The stories in Ancestry by Eileen O’Leary champion those who are tenacious in the face of life’s surprises.
Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle follows nineteen-year-old Cowney Sequoyah as he navigates difficult social, cultural, and ethnic divides.
Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginner Poets is an anthology edited by Abayomi Animashaun and brings a number of established and emerging poets together to welcome new and beginner poets into the art and craft of poetry.
Deborah Jang’s Float True carries story and emotion via reflections on an immigrant family, history, metaphysical musings, and earthly perplexities.
The poems in T.R. Hummer’s In These States are haunted by precise and troubling questions: what, exactly is the condition of the body politic, and how does that condition affect us, both in large and small ways, in abstract and concrete symptoms, in dailiness and in eras?
You can learn more about each of these New & Noteworthy books at our website and find them at our our affiliate Bookshop.org. You can see how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section here: https://npofficespace.com/classified-advertising/new-title-issue-ad-reservation/.
Guest Post by Lynn Levin
Poet and writer Chris Bullard is blessed, or maybe tormented, with a brilliant and surrealistic muse. In his new chapbook Continued, Bullard graces us with a comedy of lost souls and a range of humorously morbid imaginings.
The poet delivers his meditations and perturbations in a range of quirky and hybridized forms perfectly paired to the content. The prose poem “Cartoon” satirizes a New Yorker-type cartoon of a person stranded on a desert island. And if being shipwrecked were not bad enough, the cartoonist draws himself a hole and plummets through it into the sea. In the flash fiction piece “Miracle,” a man runs over a herd of migrating abalones as he drives to a job interview. He hides this awful secret from his wife who is sympathetic to the mollusks and later turns into an abalone himself, much to his delight. Bullard’s humor is so desperate that it becomes hilarious. I laughed aloud at his crossword puzzle poem “Down,” the word “down” evoking both the direction of the crossword clues and the speaker’s mood. Sample clues include “4. A slipping away of consciousness” and “9. The phenomenon of chaos.”
The list form is one of Bullard’s favorites. “More Prompts for the Writer” is a send-up of workshop exercises, and each evokes the tormented mindset of the instructor. Number 13 invites the writers to “Imagine a car, a ship, a flying saucer, anything for chrissakes, taking you away from here forever.” Some of the pieces in Continued are more morbid, some more hilariously absurd. I often found myself laughing aloud at the author’s deconstructions of normalcy and the self. I could go on tantalizing you with snippets of Bullard’s work, but I think you should explore these comic and disturbing poems for yourself.
Continued by Chris Bullard. Grey Book Press, July 2020.
Reviewer bio: Lynn Levin’s most recent book is the poetry collection The Minor Virtues (Ragged Sky, 2020).
The Society of Classical Poets, a non-profit organization formed in 2012, publishes an annual literary magazine called The Society of Classical Poets Journal. They are dedicated to the continuation of Beauty, Goodness, Truth, and excellent poetry. They believe good, new poetry cherishes and builds on the perennial techniques like meter and rhyme as such poetry carries a message and is infused with the profound insights and character of the poet.
The latest issue of the journal contains more than 300 pages of work by James A. Tweedie, Adam Sedia, Joe Tessitore, Leo Zoutewelle, Theresa Rodriguez, Peter Hartley, C.B. Anderson, Randal A. Burd, Jr., T.M. Moore, Martin Rizley, David Watt, Joseph Charles MacKenzie, Gleb Zavlanov, Michael Curtis, Joseph S. Salemi, Martin Hill Ortiz, Sally Cook, Daniel Galef, Susan Jarvis Bryant, Ron L. Hodges, and many more.
They also post essays and poems online as well has hosting poetry contests and offering a forum for writers to workshop their poems. They are open to submissions year-round. Stop by their listing on NewPages to learn more.
Guest Post by Chang Shih Yen
Lockdown gives you more free time to reread classics and revisit things you love as a child. The Little Prince is a book by French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was originally written in French and first published in 1943. Since then, it has been translated into hundreds of languages and has sold many millions of copies.
In The Little Prince, the narrator is a pilot who has crash landed in the Sahara Desert. In the middle of the desert, the pilot meets a little prince who comes from a different planet. The little prince has decided to travel and visit different planets, including Earth. The little prince asks the pilot many questions about the world. In this book, readers meet many characters like the little prince, his rose, his lamb in a box, and the fox. The book is also illustrated with charming illustrations by the author.
The Little Prince may be a children’s book, but it should be recommended reading for all ages. This book reveals the truths about life and the essential secret to understanding life. This book can be read at any stage in life, and each time that you read it, you will discover new truths and connect with your inner child.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943.
Reviewer bio: Chang Shih Yen is a writer from Malaysia, seeing through the pandemic in New Zealand. She writes a blog at https://shihyenshoes.wordpress.com/
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 13th issue features poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from contributors around the globe. Accomplished, well-established authors are published—side by side—with fresh, emerging voices. Readers are provided with a powerful, focused literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. Always free to access, and always free from advertising, discover what over 70,000 readers in 145 countries already know; the finest new writing is here, at your fingertips.
The Summer 2020 issue of Salamander features poetry by Rajiv Mohabir, Emily O’Neill, Rose McLarney, Sebastián Hasani Páramo, and many more; translations by Martha Collins, Nguyen Ba Chung, and Sergey Gerasimov; fiction by Anne Kilfoyle, Matthew Wamser, Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, and Joanna Pearson; creative nonfiction by Kathryn Nuernberger; artwork by Emily Forbes; and reviews by Joseph Holt, Mike Good, Katie Sticca, and Brandel France de Bravo.
Ongoing Enrollment; Location: Online
Storyville Writing Workshop offers virtual writing workshops online for a wide variety of skill levels. Workshops provide personalized critiques, ongoing email access to the instructor, writing resources, personal virtual meetings via Google Meet, as well as access writing forums. The Basics of Novel Writing is currently available to enroll in. Learn more at storyvilleworkshop.com/online-workshops/.
Evan D. Williams’ Escape Risk on the cover of The MacGuffin’s Volume 36.2 charts a vivid route out via literature of whatever quarantine situation you may find yourself trapped in. Journey to a new home and a new job in Mark Halpern’s “Would You Like Fries with That?” or head out on a cinematic cross-country trek with grandma in Jordan J.A. Hill’s “Marching Towards Golgotha.” Matthew Olzmann—guest judge of this year’s Poet Hunt contest—is highlighted in a short feature that begins on p. 101, while Erin Schalk’s gouache, ink, and wax form a vibrant mid-volume oasis.
The latest issue of bioStories introduces readers to the survivors of wars and the survivors of accidents, transports them to homeless shelters and hospitals, onto urban campuses and within rural farmhouses, and invites them to live briefly alongside occupants of cramped Brooklyn apartments and Southwest desert trailer parks. Work by Steven Beckwith, J. Malcolm Garcia, Jay Bush, Gary Fincke, and more.
Beginning Dates: July 27; Virtual
Registration Deadline: Rolling
Willow Writers’ Workshops is going virtual this summer and fall! We will offer workshops, providing writing prompts, craft discussions, and manuscript consultations. All levels are welcome. Three different courses are being offered: Desire to Write? An Introduction to Creative Writing; Flash: Writing Short, Short Prose; and Writers Workshop on Thursday Nights, a six-week course focusing on short stories. Summer dates begin July 27. The facilitator is Susan Isaak Lolis, a published and award-winning writer. For more information, check out willowwritersretreat.com.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Who didn’t have an embarrassing crush growing up? For thirteen-year-old Chava in “I Love You, Dr. Rudnitsky” by Avigayl Sharp, her new crush is her titular dentist.
Chava, deep in the throes of the brutality of puberty, falls in love with her dentist one day. Her newfound crush with its accompanying fantasies serves as a respite from her real life: being Jewish and bullied at her Catholic school, a disconnect with her distant mother, and disgust at her own body—her weight, her body hair, her budding sexuality.
Sharp gives Chava a voice that’s somehow both humorous and tragic, bringing me back to those awkward days of adolescence and the torturous process of puberty. She’s upfront and honest, telling us truths she doesn’t admit to others, while simultaneously wrapping us up in one lie after the other. By the end of the story, it feels like we’re reading her Dr. Rudnitsky fanfiction she’s posting on some secret blog. One can’t help feeling sympathy for Chava, for wanting to sit her down and give her a hug and some advice, and we can thank Sharp for creating such a cringe-worthy yet completely loveable character.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
There’s a fine selection of short fiction in the Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Concho River Review. Among them is the five-page “Tacos Callejeros” by Kenneth Hinegardner.
In this story, Steven observes a mother and her two children at a restaurant. The children misbehave as he eats and watches their behavior, and he ends up taking a liking to their mother, Melanie. Between these observations are passages about watching a dog fight on a past trip to Tijuana. As we read, it becomes clear Steven is not a caring and concerned individual, but is closer to a dog, its teeth around another dog’s throat.
Hinegardner writes with a slow build to the end, writing with precision and subtlety. The final character in this story, Ruben, acts the reader’s place, recognizing this part of Steven that is slowly revealed across the pages in this chilling, short piece.
The Center for Creative Writing has been guiding aspiring writers toward a regular writing practice for more than 30 years. Their passionate, published teachers offer inspiring online writing courses in affordable six-week sessions, as well as one-on-one services (guidance, editing) and writing retreats (virtual for 2020). Whatever your background or experience, They can help you become a better writer and put you in touch with the part of you that must write, so that you will keep writing. Join their inclusive, supportive community built on reverence for creativity and self-expression, and find your way with words. Creativewritingcenter.com.
Guest Post by Christy O’Callaghan
Last summer, when we could still travel, I had the honor of attending the Disquiet Literary Program in Lisbon. As part of that fantastic two weeks, we were treated to panels of local authors and discussions about the history of Portugal. Had I not had that experience, I may never have learned about the western world’s longest dictatorship. The panelists possessed so much history as people who lived those times or grew up in the wake of them. One such panelist was Dulce Maria Cardoso. Before I left Portugal, I’d already ordered her book The Return.
Her novel, which is translated into English by Angel Gurria-Quintana, mirrors her experience of being a Portuguese citizen but raised in Angola, one of Portugal’s colonies at the time. When Portugal had its revolution, so did their colonies. This book follows a family exiled back to Portugal, returning to a country many had never set foot in and where they weren’t welcomed with open arms. The main character Rui is a teenage boy trying to wrap his head around what’s happening, why, and how to live in this foreign Motherland.
Books like The Return exemplify why good translations are valuable. This dictatorship, let alone that colonies still existed, weren’t discussed when I was in school. And these events took place only 45 years ago. Being able to hear Dulce tell her story was a gift I shall treasure forever, but not everyone has that privilege. Access to books written in other languages then translated means more people can share in that information, those cultures, and experiences. Learning about our own society and history is essential. So too is knowing what has happened in the larger world—allowing us to glean from other’s experiences in hopes of not repeating them.
The Return by Dulce Marie Cardoso. MacLehose Press, 2016.
Reviewer bio: Christy O’Callaghan lives in Upstate, New York. Her favorite pastimes include anything in the fresh air. For her blog and writing, go to christyflutterby.com.
The 50th Anniversary Issue of Seneca Review, ON ANXIETY, is guest edited by Joe Wenderoth. Featuring poems and essays by Mary Ruefle, Graham Foust, Jamil Jan Kochai, Kitty Liang, Immanuel Mifsud, Amie Zimmerman, Lake Angela, Judy Bertelsen, Laura Brun, Eric Burger, Mike Carlson, Curtis D’Costa, and more. Cover art and design by Abigail Frederick.
This month’s Plume Featured Selection: “Caliche Sand and Clay: Five Albuquerque Poets” with work by and interviews with Jenn Givhan, Felecia Caton Garcia, Michelle Otero, Rebecca Aronson, and Hilda Raz. In Essays & Comment: “It’s Called the Renaissance, You Know, or The Soul Sibling Report” by David Kirby. Fred Marchant reviews Ledger by Jane Hirschfield.
This issue is dedicated to Dr. Terry Dalrymple, the founding editor of CRR. It includes fiction by Peter Barlow, Michael Fitzgerald, and others; nonfiction by Michael Cohen, Lucie Barron Eggleston, and more; and poetry by Barbara Astor, Roy Bentley, Jonathan Bracker, Matthew Brennan, Holly Day, Alexis Ivy, Ken Meisel, Alita Pirkopf, Maureen Sherbondy, Travis Stephens, Marc Swan, Loretta Diane Walker, Francine Witte, and more. Read more at the Concho River Review website.
This issue of Cleaver Magazine features art by Madeline Rile Smith, a visual narrative by Emily Steinberg, and an essay on the art of Jan Powell by Melanie Carden. Also in this issue: short stories by Reilly Joret, Elaine Crauder, Melissa Brook, and Marion Peters Denard; flash by Susan Tacent, Brenna Womer, Michelle Ephraim, Leonard Kress, and others; and poetry by Roy Bentley, Stella Hayes, and more.
Deadline: July 31, 2020
Don’t forget The Daphne Review is hosting an online mentorship program for talented high school student writers and established writers/teachers acting as their mentors. They’re currently taking applications for both types (students and qualified mentors) until July 31st! To apply, submit a resume and brief cover letter to [email protected]. Start Date: August 3-28. Format: online. Classes: flash fiction, poetry. Pay for mentors: $50 per hour for skype or $200; $25 per hour for email or $100; total: $300 via paypal. www.thedaphnereview.org
Guest Post by Emily Cinquemani
Megan Fernandes’ collection Good Boys takes a fresh and brilliant look at the anxieties and violence of our world, as well as the stories we create to accept them. These poems are both vast and personal. In them, I ran in the suburbs, visited Paris, and imagined what I would miss about the earth. Fernandes’ speaker is both vulnerable and bold. She gleans revelation from each new experience, including tarot readings, goat miscarriages, and knocking on the metal of an airplane before taking flight.
In this collection, mythology is an intimate part of the present moment. The speaker imagines herself stuck between Scylla and Charybdis and hears Virgil sing in her ribcage. We are asked to look at our own stories critically: what narratives do we have of our reality, and which of them are true? Which of them are harmful? Fernandes recognizes the stories we condone while unweaving them, and she does so with precision. She writes, “Only white people // can imagine a past / that was better // than now.” In the poem “Regret is a Blue Dive,” the speaker insists, “Things that are brave are often painful,” and wrestles with the possibility of being alone. These poems have an insistent, challenging, and beautiful honesty. They ask us to face uncertainty and let it linger, rather than running away.
Fernandes’ work also gives language to experiences I have previously been unable to name. For example, in her poem “Fabric in Tribeca,” her speaker refers to her sadness as “very adult” because it “will not make a scene” and asks, “Who makes curtains to give their sadness a perimeter?” Fernandes writes that, on earth, “everything is a portrait of gravity.” In every poem, I discovered something new or rediscovered something familiar. I am grateful for Fernandes’ voice and for the company these poems afford me as I move through the world.
Good Boys by Megan Fernandes. Tin House, February 2020.
Reviewer bio: Emily Cinquemani’s poetry is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, 32 Poems, and Indiana Review. She is a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
The latest issue of The Florida Review includes the writers who placed in the 2019 Editors’ Awards. There are plenty to sink your teeth into.
Nonfiction
“Skin the Bunny” by Kirk Wilson
“To Trace the Sky” by Cherie Nelson
Poetry
“Father-Son & Holy” by Aurielle Marie
“Bridal Suite” by Joanne Dominique Dwyer
“Culture Shock” & “The Cycle” by Lani Yu
Fiction
“In Loco Parentis” by Eleanor Bluestein
“Americana” by Jennifer Buentello
“All the Guessing Gets Us” by George Looney
Chapbook
“Bedweather” by Angelo R. Lacuesta & Roy Allen Martinez
from “My father is housed inside a whale” by My Tran
There’s even more to check out within this issue, so be sure to grab a copy for yourself.
Online literary magazine Tint Journal was founded in 2018 during the LARB/USC Publishing Workshop. Their mission is to encourage emerging and established ESL authors to stand behind their non-native backgrounds. The publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by non-native English writers biannually. They also accept interviews and reviews by contributors of any linguistic background.
By choosing English as their means of communication, these writers provide their English reading audience with an immediate take on their values, ideas, and beliefs. They bridge borders and blend cultures without the third party of the translator and offer the purest and deepest understanding of their fiction and nonfiction worlds.
Their Spring 2020 issue features essays, poetry, and fiction by Catherine C. Con, Annick Duignan, Ifeoluwa Ayandele, Eneida P. Alcalde, Sejal Ghia, Rhea Malik, E. Izabelle Cassandra Alexander, Mario Marčinko, Hibah Shabkhez, and Caroline Smadja.
Stop by their listing on NewPages to learn more about them.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
I love when a poem has visual components, so I was happy to see a couple pieces by Ryan Mihaly in the Summer 2020 issue of The Massachusetts Review with visual accompaniment.
“[B]” and “[A♯/B♭]” are paired with clarinet fingering charts. In “[B],” the speaker looks back at “a catalogue of embarrassments,” which are broken down and pointed out on the chart as “Wrong name,” “Loss of language,” and “Failed elegance.” “[A♯/B♭]” explores language and communication, finishing, “Music is not a language because it cannot be translated into anything. It can only be described. A♯, then, is the word ‘handiwork’ mispronounced ‘hand-eye-work.’” The chart above shows a corresponding “Hand,” “Eye,” and “Work.”
While both poems would work just fine without the visual aspect, their presence is still welcome and enhances each piece, the text almost working as a footnote to guide the reader through the charts.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
I may be an atheist, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying Liz Bruno’s poem in the latest issue of The Cape Rock. “Jesus, The Original Disney Princess” compares the religious figure to the familiar cartoon girls of our youth. I found the comparison to be lighthearted and sweet, the connections between Jesus and the girls clear. They’re all “Westernized beauty queen[s],” with “endless magic.” They teach “girls and boys to dream big and look pretty” and are friends with animals, are critics of the bourgeois, and rise above their humble beginnings.
A new and different take on the familiar religious figure, Bruno creates an endearing poem with an eye-catching title.