Kenyon Review Editor David Baker opens the May/June 2019 issue with his commentary on the annual “Nature’s Nature” theme. In response to our having witnessed “the Trump administration take further steps to release two hundred thousand more acres of public land—this time in Utah along the Canyonlands and the Green River—to ‘development,'” Baker notes that “Greed, stupidity, and fever for power are not new to our country or even our species—read Shakespeare, Dante, Homer—but the velocity of unfixable damages and the extent of losses are without precedent.”
Baker asks, “Are we one or two generations away from the point of no return for environmental stability? Is ours the last generation with hope of preventing or slowing a massive disaster? Is it too late? The calculations come every week, with variables, but the constant alarm is the same.”
This is what compelled him, he recounts, “to curate a special feature on ecology and poetry . . . I wanted to showcase new poems that resisted such forms of power and that named one by one the spectacular, beautiful, and often endangered citizens of the natural world.”
Now an annual issue, the writers featured each year are purposefully diverse in that the publication does not choose the same authors to appear more than once. The compilation features twenty-seven new poems, one essay, and two portfolios of artwork. For a full list of content with some selections available to read online, visit the Kenyon Review.
First Prize $1000
“Mixed Drinks” in Zone 3 Spring 2019 is one of many collaborative works by Brenda Miller and Julie Marie Wade, erasing their cross country divide to create a memoir which blends (no pun intended) a list of drinks with associated memories from childhood (Shirley Temple) through adolescence (Bloody Mary), college years (Old Fashioned) to adulthood (Cosmopolitan). Recipes included.
Winner of Boulevard’s 2018 Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers, Gabe Montesanti’s essay “The Worldwide Roller Derby Convention” is featured in the Spring 2019 issue (#101/102). 
As John Zheng shares in his introduction to the Fall 2018 “Rivers and Waters” issue of Valley Voices: A Literary Review: “Rivers are lifelines of all things in this world, and river plains are cradles of ancient civilizations. [ . . . ] We need the river to live; we need the river to enrich our spiritual life and inspire our creative writing as well.” This beautiful introduction about the importance of rivers and waters in all our lives—in fact, in the very evolution of humankind itself—sets the mood to all of the beautiful poems and images about the rivers and waters that follow.
Issue No. 17 of The Common includes a special portfolio of stories from Syria, with works by 
A great idea to celebrate the 200th birthday of Walt Whitman,The Poetry Motel Foundation and the Hudson Valley Writers Guild will hold a public reading of “Song of Myself” on May 31 at the Robert Burns Statue, Washington Park, Albany, NY. 
Now in its 13th LUCKY year, the August Poetry Postcard Festival is opening registration earlier than usual, starting May 1!
The Winner of the 2018 Orison Poetry Prize was published earlier this month, and readers can now find As One Fire Consumes Another by John Sibley Williams at the publisher’s website. A meeting of metaphysics and social critique, the poems in this collection examine American history and violence.
Cream City Review, named for the cream-colored bricks that made Milwaukee famous, is anything but brick-like. The Spring/Summer 2018 issue is slim and elegantly designed, decorated front and back with intriguing teardrops, a blue glow, the earth, and what look like gravestones. In a letter to their readers, editors Mollie Boutell and Caleb Nelson write, “The daily news cycle is a swirl of darkness and absurdity, so it should not surprise us that the landscape of contemporary literature reflects a similar mood.” The current issue plays with darkness and light, sometimes descending deeply into the former, but always doing so for the sake of art, illuminating through darkness, showing both the path and the ways that we humans are led astray. 
A novel idea indeed, but also one that is deeply appreciated as a model approach to genre storytelling. The editors comment on the larger issue behind creating this prize: “While women in the real world are fighting sexual abuse and violence, being harassed, assaulted and raped, or being murdered because they’re women, the casual and endless depiction of females as victims or prey sits uneasily alongside their fight. Real rape survivors struggle to be heard, counted and believed, under-reporting is rife, partly because victims fear being torn apart in court, and prosecutions continually fail. Meanwhile, in popular culture, women are endlessly cast as victims of stalking, abduction, rape and murder, for entertainment.”
First Place
Founded in 1990, the Iowa Poetry Prize is awarded for a book-length collection of poems each year.
Monmouth University has announced a new way for students to earn a degree. The MA/MFA dual degree program in Creative Writing prepares writers for their future by offering publishing experience, an award-winning faculty, and flexible course offerings.
The editors of Cave Wall poetry magazine have put in great effort to create The Nina Riggs Poetry Award to honor their late friend and poet, author of The Bright Hour and Lucky Lucky.
Winner
With its Spring 2019 issue, Raleigh Review celebrates nine years of continuous publication. As they head into their tenth year, Editor and Publisher Rob Greene notes, “we realized it was time to reward our staff members who do the work on the magazine, so in addition to increasing the amount we’re paying to our poets, writers, and visual artists by a third, we are finally beginning to take small strides to help reward our telecommuting and highly skilled editorial staff who are based throughout the country and at times the world.”
Jason Splichal, Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sky Island Journal writes in his opening letter to Issue 7: “We are different from other literary journals in so many ways. While we appreciate and respect the paths that other publications have taken, it has been clear from the beginning that the path less taken will always be our path. The rugged independence and relentless tenacity required to stay on that path helps us to be mindful; every step we take should be made with kindness and humility. Reading and responding to every submission, then having the ability to share the work of writers from around the world with readers from around the world, are privileges beyond the telling. We’re so grateful for our contributors and our readers.”
First Place
Produced within the MFA at Eastern Washington University, Willow Springs literary magazine features writers from their current print issue online.
“Etymology of a Mood” by Ama Codjoe won The Georgia Review’s 2018 Lorain Willams Poetry Prize, chosen by Natasha Trethewey.
In January, Anhinga Press released the winner of their 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry: Known by Salt by Tina Mozelle Braziel.
Flash Prose
Recent posts include:
If your interest is in the outdoors as well as the arts, something fresh and new, The Boardman Review is an excellent choice. Subtitled “the creative culture & outdoor lifestyle journal of northern Michigan,” this print and digital journal includes literature, music, lifestyle profiles, and documentaries that focus on the work and lives of creative people who express their love of the outdoors without trying to promote their talent. This last issue of 2018 provides a promise of even more fascinating work during the coming year.
This month, find Luxury, Blue Lace by S. Brook Corfman at Autumn House Press. Winner of the 2018 Rising Writer Contest, judge Richard Siken notes how Corfman “examines the ways that presentation and representation conflate and complicate. Expansive, generous, deeply considered, and highly lyric, this book, with its transformations and overlaps, astounds.”
As I write now, during the middle days of February, hard upon our Spring 2019 deadline, the dice are still not fully cast for my successor or my exact departure date – and so I will be brief again: the earliest I would step away is 1 June, at which time our Summer 2019 issue will literally be in press and the preparation of the Fall 2019 contents will be in full swing, so my ghost will be around for at least some aspects of the latter. The goal for me, for the rest of the Georgia Review staff, and for the University of Georgia, is a transition that will be as smooth as possible for our submitters, contributors, and readers.
Write Prize for Fiction
The Kenyon Review offers readers In Memoriam, “a space for remembering notable contributors to the pages of KR. We regret the loss of their voices from the world of arts and letters.”
There was a lot going on at the end of 2018, so maybe you missed out on some of the award-winning books published toward the tail end of the year. Don’t worry—we’ve got you covered.
Glimmer Train March 2019 Bulletin offers an interesting selection of craft essays, each just at a tipping point of controversy.
Pleaides Press annually hosts the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize, the winning writer receiving $3000 with the winning collection published by the press and distributed by Louisiana State University Press. Readers can find the winner of the 2018 prize published last month: dark // thing by Ashley M. Jones.
Subscribers to Rattle poetry magazine get bonus in their mailbox with each spring issue: Rattle Young Poets Anthology. If you’re not a subscriber, 
Scholastic News Kids Press Corps, a team of Kid Reporters from across the country and around the world that covers “news for kids, by kids” is taking applications. Students ages 10–14 with a passion for telling great stories and discussing issues that matter most to kids are encouraged to apply for the 2019–2020 school year. All applications must be received by May 31, 2019.
The Academy of American Poets offers a plethora of FREE resources for celebrating National Poetry Month!
First Place
Engaging Civically through Collaborative Art: Developing a Working Aesthetics of Protest Art with Michelle Slater
Since there is always a lag time created between contemporary news issues and publications of poetry, Rattle has created a quick-streaming solution.
“Oh, plastic, scourge of the Anthropocene, shaped into adorable shapes and dyed multifarious colors; plastic, who will be with us forever: it’s easy to forget about you, but when I remember you’re here, I’m annoyed and freaked out all at once.”
1st place goes to Marian Palaia [pictured] of San Francisco, California, who wins $2500 for “Wild Things.” Her story will be published in Issue 106, the final issue of Glimmer Train Stories.
“All of the work in this special Fall issue of Cold Mountain Review about a fair and just relationship between people and their society has great emotional impact,” writes Consulting Editor Vivian Shipley in her Editor’s Note. And the work strikes upon a variety of justice issues: the opioid crisis; transgender experience; the multitude of experiences of women from different identities, races, and classes; the continued impact of oppression created by colonial occupation; the impact of humans on the environment; ecological aspects; and the role of social media.
First Place
growing into ourselves