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The Kenyon Review Nov/Dec 2017 issue features winners of the 2017 Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers. This award "recognizes outstanding young poets and is open to high school sophomores and juniors throughout the world. The contest winner receives a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers workshop." Winning entries can also be read online here.

First Prize
Eileen Huang: “Movie Scene on a Highway Shoulder"

Runners Up
Daniel Blokh: “Family Portrait with Lost Map"
Isabella Victoria: “Clemente Curls"

Publishing since 1967 from the University of Victoria, The Malahat Review is one of Canada's leading literary journals. Editors since its inception have included Robin Skelton, John Peter, Constance Rooke, Derk Wynand, Marlene Cookshaw, and currently John Barton (since 2004).

Originally subtitled "An International Magazine of Life and Letters," The Malahat Review  now focuses on Canadian and international poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The publication's website also features book reviews, interviews, contests, podcasts, and publishing tips - a bimontly guest column in which authors share how to improve professionals skills: "from the writing of cover letters, to what house style means, to choosing a rhyming dictionary, to having an author photo (as opposed to a selfie) shot."

Happy Anniversary Malahat! Here's hoping for another great half-century to come!

The Indianapolis Review is a new online quarterly of poetry and visual art supporting the growth of new voices in the literary scene in Indianapolis and beyond. Founder and Editor in Chief Natalie Solmer and Associate Editor Rachel Sahaidachny started the publication “to give back to the poetry and art world by curating a platform to showcase poets and artists. We desire to create connections among writers and artists in our community and around the globe. In our own publishing experiences, we've seen there is always a need for venues to publish new work.”

The University of Iowa Press published the winners of the 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award and the 2017 John Simmons Short Fiction Award last month.

Matthew Lansburgh’s Outside is the Ocean, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, was chosen by Andre Dubus III, who calls the linked collection “mesmerizing” as it “explores, among other things, the tenuous tie between mother and son, between the Old World and the New, between what was and what is.”

Winner of the John Simons Short Fiction Award, What Counts as Love by Marian Crotty, is “sensual, brave, and wonderfully evocative” as Crotty  examines“the seemingly tattered nature of love, taking us deeply into the varied lives of her characters and making us care for them all.” The nine stories follow people—most often young women—searching for human connection, their stories touching on themes of addiction, class, sexuality, and gender.

Stop by the University of Iowa Press website to learn more about the awards and winning titles.

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their July/August Very Short Fiction Award. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories with a word count under 3000. The next Very Short Fiction competition will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

1st place goes to Chase Burke of Tuscaloosa, AL [pictured], who wins $2000 for “That’s That.” His story will be published in Issue 101 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first major print publication.

2nd place goes to Brian Yansky of Austin, TX, for “The Curse.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize from $500 to $700.

3rd place goes to Ajit Dhillon of Singapore, for “Waiting.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize from $300 to $700.

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

October offered more treats than just candy this year. Readers, a handful of prize-winning books hit bookshelves last month, and if you haven’t already gotten your hands on them, now is your chance!

The grand finalist of the Vine Leaves Vignette Collection Award, The Walmart Book of the Dead by Lucy Biederman, draws inspiration from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Biederman’s version includes shoplifters, grifters, drifters, and hustlers as they wander Walmart unknowingly consigned to their afterlives.

Stephanie Carpenter brought home the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction with Missing Persons. Selected by Press 53 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Kevin Morgan Watson, the collection contains stories that are “diverse in setting, conflict, and style,” and it rose above over 230 other manuscripts to claim the prize.

Pleaides Press awards the Editors Prize for Poetry each spring. The 2016 winner, A Lesser Love by E. J. Koh, was published this month. “Love, war and recovered testimony from Korea’s unhealed border inform the formal and imaginative boundaries” within the debut collection, according to D. A. Powell’s advance praise. Learn more about the collection at the press’s website.

In Set to Music a Wildfire, Ruth Awad’s homage to her father “explores the violence of living, the guilt of surviving, the loneliness of faith, and the impossible task of belonging.” Winner of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize, Awad writes of family, country, and the Lebanese Civil War.

Be sure to stop by each press’s website listed above to learn more about the award-winning books published last month.

Edited and published by Richard Peabody, along with the work of Associate Editor Lucinda Ebersole, Gargoyle celebrates 40 years of publishing with a 'two-sided' issue: Issue 65 - Side 1 and Issue 66 - Side 2. Sadly, Lucinda passed away March 20, 2017, as Peabody notes, "I'm heartbroken that my literary partner in crime has passed away. My plan is to shepherd her short story manuscripts and novel into print over the next few years. She was one of a kind and the funniest human I have ever known."

Gargoyle's impression on the literary landscape is vast, and it's with great hope and support for Richard and his staff that they will continue well into the future. In celebration, from the Gargoyle website:

In our first 40 years, Gargoyle has published work by:

10 Acker Award winners,
6 National Book Award-winning authors,
3 PEN/Faulkner winners,
4 Pulitzer Prize winners,
2 MacArthur Fellows,
2 Nebula Award winners,
2 Yale Younger Poets,
1 Hugo Award winner,
1 Poet Laureate,
6 Iowa Short Fiction Award winners,
6 Flannery O'Connor Award winners,
3 James Laughlin Award winners,
2 Lamont Poetry Selection winners,
2 William Carlos Williams Award winners,
8 National Poetry Series winners,
5 Orange Prize Long List writers,
2 Orange Prize Short List writers,
2 National Book Critics Circle Award winners,
6 Lambda Literary Award winners,
1 Gertrude Stein Award winner, and
3 Firecracker Alternative Book Award winners, among others.

In her Editor's Notes to Issue 13 of Saranac Review, Elizabeth Cohen begins by quoting Emily Dickinson: "If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Cohen writes, "We are sometimes asked at Saranac Review  how we select the work we publish, and I think Dickinson's words are applicable. Of course we seek work that has strong voice, craft and originality, but in the end, it is the visceral response that probably most informs our choices. We choose poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and plays that make us feel and evoke in us a response that physically affects us, while simultaneously reminding us why we read in the first place. If you could read our notes to one another on Submittable, you would see a lot of this: 'Made me tingle,' 'heart stopping,' 'took my breath away.'"

With such discerning criteria, writers have got to meet that bar, providing readers much to look forward to in each issue of Saranac Review.

American Life in Poetry: Column 657
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I was deeply moved by this week's poem, which shows us the courage of a person struggling with a disability, one that threatens the way in which she wishes to present herself. It illustrates the fierce dignity that many of us have observed in elderly people. Wesley McNair served five years as poet laureate of Maine, and his most recent book is The Unfastening, published by David R. Godine.


My Mother's Penmanship Lessons

In her last notes, when her hand began
to tremble, my mother tried to teach it

the penmanship she was known for,
how to make the slanted stems

of the p's and d's, the descending
roundness of the capital m's, the long

loops of the f's crossed at the center,
sending it back again and again

until each message was the same:
a record of her insistence that the hand

return her to the way she was before,
and of all the ways the hand had disobeyed.


We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Wesley McNair, “My Mother's Penmanship Lessons,” from The Unfastening, (David R. Godine, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Wesley McNair and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

"Twenty years ago," writes Brevity Editor Dinty W. Moore, "I had an idea for a magazine that combined the swift impact of flash fiction with the true storytelling of memoir, and Brevity was born. To be honest, I expected it to last a year."

Instead, Brevity has aged into the most well-known publication of its kind, with a rich history of publishing new authors who have become some of the most respected in the genre, and guiding writers as they learn and practice their craft.

In celebration, Brevity reached out to authors who have appeared multiple times in Brevity over the years and commissioned their submissions for an anniversary issue. Authors includes Lee Martin, Diane Seuss, Brenda Miller, Sue William Silverman, Rebecca McClanahan, and Ira Sukrungruang. Moore notes that readers "may detect a common theme (or at least a common word)" among the works.

Read Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction as well as book reviews and craft essays online here.

After publishing 12 print issues from 2004-2015 in association with Columbia College Chicago, and a brief hiatus, Court Green is back with issue 13, "the first in its new incarnation as an independent online journal" edited by Tony Trigilio and David Trinidad.

Featured in this revival issue are poems by Matthew Burgess, Chris Green, Ginger Ko, Robert Siek, Kimiko Hahn, George Kalamaras, Annah Browning, Kimberly Lyons, Hafizah Geter, Megan Fernandes, Diane Seuss, Lynn Crosbie, Harlee Logan Kelly, Kenyatta Rogers, and C. Russell Price.

A special bonus features: “Robert Siek: 13 Instagram Photos”; Peter K. Steinberg, “‘A Fetish Somehow’: A Sylvia Plath Bookmark”; and “Radio Free Albion: Interview with George Kalamaras.”

Welcome back Court Green!

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their July/August Fiction Open competition. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers. Stories generally range from 3000-6000 words, though up to 20,000 is fine. The next Fiction Open will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Arianna Reiche, of London, England, wins $3000 for “Archive Warden." Her story will be published in Issue 101 of Glimmer Train Stories. [Photo Credit: Laura Gallant.]

Second place: Randolph Thomas, of Baton Rouge, LA, wins $1000 for “Heir Apparent.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue.

Third place: Sharon Solwitz, of Chicago, IL, wins $600 for “We Enter History.”

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Deadline soon approaching! Short Story Award for New Writers: October 31
This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5000. No theme restrictions. Most submissions to this category run 1000-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. First place prize wins $2500 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories. Second/third: $500/$300 and consideration for publication. Click here for complete guidelines.

The fall issue of Carve Magazine features the winners of the 2017 Raymond Carver Contest as selected by Guest Judge Pinckney Benedict:

First Place
"Richard" by David J. Wingrave in Warsaw, Poland

Second Place
"Laughing and Turning Away" by Patrick Holloway in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Third Place
"Homecoming" by Zachary Lunn in Raleigh, NC

Editor’s Choice
"The Anatomy of Todd Melkin" by Catherine Malcynsky in Chester, CT
 "Windfall" by Edward Hamlin in Boulder, CO

Read these winning stories online here. For a full list of semifinalists and information about the contest, visit Carve online.

The cover image for issue 19 of Cleaver Magazine online is mixed media/map entitled “He had an Awkward Relationship With The Truth” by Emily Steinberg.
Photographs by street photographer J. Ray Paradiso are featured on the cover screen for the online Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.
Catherine Heard's work can be found on the cover of Hamilton Arts & Letters Magazine 10.1 as well as featured in an online portfolio. Her work "work interrogates the histories of science, medicine and the museum. Simultaneously attractive and repulsive, her works delve into primal anxieties about the body."

The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing is seeking a Senior Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, a semi-annual international literary journal edited by the Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University.

In addition to general management and editorial duties, the Senior Editor will also be responsible for directing a special translation project and academic database using literature previously published in Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Applicants should have a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism or a related field and five years related experience; an MFA in Creative Writing, bilingualism, and experience working in a university setting and web development are preferred.

Salary range $41,976 - $50,000 DOE.

To view the full job description and apply, visit http://bit.ly/2hNxTGU or search openings at https://cfo.asu.edu/applicant by job title “Senior Editor” or requisition number “36507BR”. A pdf of the job description is also available at http://bit.ly/2fRlVLQ.

Individuals with any questions should contact the Piper Center at 480.965.6018 or pipercenter.info-at-asu.edu.

The position will close Wednesday, November 1st, 2017.

Anastasi Selby's story was selected as the winning entry for the 2016 Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers. "Certain Fires" appears in the fall issue (#97). The story focuses "on fighting wildfires in California and the sexual tensions of mixed-gender crews." Selby worked as a firefighter on three hotshot crews for the USFS in California and Colorado as well as a helicopter crew member for the Park Service in Alaska. She began her fire career in 1999, in Eugene, Oregon, and ended it in 2010, in Fairbanks, Alaska. (From jaselby.com)

Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon is a collection of broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets, in English and in Spanish. Edited by Raquel Salas Rivera and Erica Mena, published by Anomalous Press, 100% of sales will be donated directly to Taller Salud to assist Puerto Rico in recovering from Hurricane Maria. Including poems by Yara Liceaga, Raquel Albarrán, Luis Diaz (Intifada), Gaddiel Francisco Ruis Rivera, Nicole Delgado, Raquel Salas Rivera, Kadiri Vaquer Fernández, Martín Espada, Hermes Ayala, Ricardo Maldonado, Gegman Lee Ríos, Kenyatta JP García, Claritza Maldonado, Lara Mimosa Montes, Vincent Toro, Cindy Jimenez Vera, Luis Othoniel, Erica Mena, Abdiel Echevarria, and others.

I can't imagine having one successful author in the family, let alone two, and then the two of them writing - not one book together, but a series? J.L. Powers and M.A. Powers, brother and sister, have embarked on just such a journey together with the release of the first in a series of supernaturally themed YA novels. Broken Circle published by Akashic Books' YA and middle-grade imprint, Black Sheep. I have long been a fan and follower of Jessica Powers, her previous YA publications reflecting her wide range of interests as well as abilities: The Confessional  (Knopf, 2007), This Thing Called the Future  (Cinco Puntos, 2011), Amina  (Allen & Unwin, 2013), Colors of the Wind  - a children's picture book about Blind Artist and Champion Runner Geroge Mendoza with artwork by Mendoza  (Purple House, 2014). This is her first venture into the supernatural, which Claire Kirsch of Publisher's Weekly describes as "a mix of contemporary characters and setting with a mythological world."

Halloween, detail by Bo Bartlett, is seasonally appropriate for the Autumn 2017 cover of The Gettysburg Review. More of Bartlett's work is also featured in a full-color portfolio inside the publication.
"Finding Home: Family & Connections" is the theme of Bellvue Literary Review's Fall 2017 issue, with cover art and internal portfolio by father and son Paul and John Paul Caponigro.
The Massachusetts Review "back-to-school" fall 2017 issue features "He Who Is as if Death Were Not," an archival pigment print on German etching paper from Ayana V Jackson's series To Kill or Allow to Live in the issue.

Boulevard's fall symposium on campus protests includes essays by Jim Craig, Megan Giddings, Ena Selimovic, Andrew Weinstein, and Robert Zaller responding to the question: "Have the recent campus protests - ranging from demonstrations to the use of safety spaces - against mainly right-wing speakers contributed to a dumbing down of American colleges, or are they effective and necessary?"

Celebrating its 35th Anniversary, Alaska Quarterly Review Editor-in-Chief Ronald Spatz, while marking the milestone with gratitude, considers this passage of time and what AQR, like many literary publications, has witnessed. "In the past we counted on artists, scholars, scientists, and journalists as reliable firewalls against ignorance. But increasingly there are powerful efforts to silence or marginalize these agents of understanding and change . . . as writers, poets, editors, and publishers, we must redouble our efforts to seek truth in all of its parts while creating every possible opportunity for compassion and empathy. In our view, the role of the arts has simply never been more crucial."

New England Review Editor Carolyn Kuebler writes in the 38.3 Editor's Note that, while the twenty-three pieces in issue 38.3 (2017) were not chosen for nor do they have a focused message or singular theme, ". . . it surprised me to see how frequently the shadow of war—to take one obvious example of a culture of violence—darkened the edges of these disparate writings. With the world always in the throes of some violence or other, it’s no wonder; whether we’re civilians or soldiers or doctors, we all become part of it. Born during the Vietnam War, finishing college at the start of the Gulf War, and then becoming a parent during the War on Terror, I’ve learned that being in a state of war doesn’t always have a clear beginning and end, and now it’s not even always clear where the war is actually happening and who’s fighting it. It’s not just in this magazine or in this moment in time that writers are contending with such themes; it’s always."

Read the full editorial here and access full-text of several works from this issue, including Louise Aronson's "Necessary Violence."

Cover: Warfare  by Sabra Field

Virga is the name for the cloud streaks that stream hazily down from the sky, snow or rain precipitation that evaporates before having a chance to reach the ground. Virga can often fool radar into recording precipitation while the ground remains dry. Perhaps in this same way, poetic and hybrid forms can be as elusive as nature herself, and why Virga is an appropriate name for new online literary biannual dedicated to poetry and hybrid writing.

September is a busy month for award-winning book releases. Here is just a sampling of small press and university press titles readers can look for this month.

At the beginning of September, Southeast Missouri State University Press published the winner of the 2015 Nilsen Literary Prize for a First Novel: Pie Man by John Surowiecki. The debut novel is told through a series of reminiscences by the titular character’s family, friends, and teachers, and explores the story of a boy, Adam Olszewski, who on his seven birthday tries to leave his family house but can’t. Soon after, the boy believes the house is alive and an inseparable part of him. Pie Man is a vivid exploration of what it means to be normal.

A Brief Alphabet of Torture: Stories by Vi Khi Nao, winner of the FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, is also out this month. A Brief Alphabet of Torture is made of many modes and genres—poetry, essay fiction, drama—and almost constitutes a novel of a different kind. Each tale is a chapter that captures the concerns that pervade life.

In poetry, readers can pick up a copy of To Whitey & the Crackerjack by May Yang (Hauntie), winner of the 2016 Robert Dana Anhinga Prize, selected by Evie Schockley. Shockley says of her selection: “May Yang’s poetry pierces the silence in which the history of Hmong women has been blanketed, with indecorous wordplay, unruly rhymes, and evocative, unequivocal images. This book begins by naming names (America, global capitalism) and ends by revivifying the poetic epigram.”

Check out the publishers' websites to learn more about these newly-releaed, award-winning titles.

The Fall 2017 issue of Raleigh Review features the 2017 Laux/Miller Poetry Prize winner, finalists and honorable mentions:

Winner
Kristin Robertson - "Poem for My Unborn Daughter"

Honorable Mention
Jenna Bazzell - "All Is Wild, All Is Silent"

Finalists
Emily Paige Wilson - "Reasons to Return Home"
Emily Rose Cole - "How Not to Remember Your Mother"
Jenna Bazzell - "The Speaker's Prayer"
Mario Ariza - "Erratic transcription of notes taken at a refugee camp in Anse-A-Pitre, Haiti"

Several of the works as well as other content from this issue can be read online here.