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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!

Magazine Stand :: Still Point Arts Quarterly – Spring 2024

Coffee, Tea, Cocoa is the theme of the spring 2024 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly, featuring art and photography, fiction and non-fiction, and poetry. Widely praised for its rich and valuable content and splendid presentation. Intended for artists, writers, nature lovers, seekers, and enthusiasts of all types.

Contributing writers to this issue include Vivien Zielin, Carole Greenfield, Anne Seymour, Diane Funston, Sheree K. Nielsen, Richard LeBlond, Gloria Heffernan, Cathy Fiorello, Nadia M. Wisley, Okakura-Kakuzo, Christie Taylor, Wendy Kennar, Rebekah Cotton, Caleigh Cassidy, Alison F. Jennings, Chrysanthemum Crenshaw, Martin Willitts Jr., Katherine Quevedo, Michael Pikna, Sheree K. Nielsen, Mitchell Near, Linea Jantz, Sabine Baring-Gould, Susanne von Rennenkampff, and Susan Wolbarst. Contributing artists include Sheree K. Nielsen, GJ Gillespie, Chris Hero, Frantisek Strouhal, MJ Edwards, Laurie Goodhart, Norma Sadler, Carolyn Schlam, and Diana Cole.

Book Review :: Mister, Mister by Guy Gunaratne

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

The text of Mister, Mister, Guy Gunaratne’s second novel, is a letter written by the main character, Yahya Bas, to the Mister of the title, a shadowy figure whom the reader never sees or knows, but who seems to work for an intelligence/military arm of the British government. Yahya is writing his account because he has cut his tongue out and, thus, is unable to answer Mister’s questions.

It’s clear Mister believes Yahya is a terrorist, largely based on Yahya’s time spent in Iraq (it’s never clear) several years after the NATO invasion of that country and incendiary poems Yahya published before leaving Britain, writing under the name Al-Bayn, a pun on Albion. Yahya was inspired to write those poems after the pictures from Abu Ghraib became known, but he was already moving in that direction.

Yahya’s father, from all he can tell, left Britain (and Yahya’s mother) to fight in Iraq in the early 1990s, where he also recorded music and poetry, a further inspiration for Yahya’s verses. Yahya’s mother suffers from some sort of depression or anxiety, so she barely speaks, leaving Yahya to be raised by a range of women he calls Mother and his uncle in the house for widows where his mother lives.

Though Yahya’s interrogator is not interested in all of this backstory, Gunaratne is, and the backstory is part of the point. The British intelligence agent only sees Yahya as a terrorist, while he is a son, a nephew, a friend, a lover, a person, in addition to his ethnic heritage and his poems. Gunaratne wants to remind readers of the power of taking back one’s story, even if one has to stop talking to do so.


Mister, Mister by Guy Gunaratne. Pantheon Books, October 2023.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

March 2024 eLitPak :: Two Spots Left for Writers Retreat in the California Redwoods

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Join Author & Writing Coach Lynne Golodner October 20-24, 2024, in Humboldt County, California, hiking and writing in the forest surrounded by the world’s tallest trees. An intimate community of writers will write, experience generative craft lessons and immerse in nature. Early Bird Registration extended until April 1st for NewPages subscribers! Apply via email. More information at the website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

March 2024 eLitPak :: 2024 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets

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Now in its 7th year, the Catamaran Poetry Prize is open to previously unpublished poetry manuscripts across a range of styles, themes, and forms. The prize is only open to West Coast poets living in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii. See our website and flyer for full details.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

March 2024 eLitPak :: Writing Contests for the Best Poem and Short Story

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Gival Press is now accepting entries for the Best stand-alone Short Story (prize: $1,000.00) and for the Best Poem about LGBTQ+ life (prize: $500.00). Details about reading fee, etc.: at our Submittable portal. Winners will be published in the online journal, ArLiJo,  which will have an Open Reading Period from March 25 to April 25, 2024. View flyer for more information.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: Tremont Writers Conference in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

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Deadline: April 30, 2024
Applications are open for the Tremont Writers Workshop, a five-day experience for a select group inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Join renowned author workshop leaders Maurice Manning (poetry), Monic Ductan (fiction), David Brill (nonfiction), and guest faculty Frank X Walker for a writers conference like no other. View flyer for more information. Apply at our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: december seeks submissions for the 2024 Curt Johnson Prose Awards

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december seeks submissions for the 2024 Curt Johnson Prose Awards in fiction and creative nonfiction. Prizes each genre: $1,500 & publication (winner); $500 & publication (honorable mention). All finalists will be listed in the 2024 Fall/Winter awards issue. $20 entry fee includes copy of awards issue. All submissions considered for publication. Submit one story or essay up to 8,000 words March 1 to May 1. For complete guidelines and judge information view our flyer and visit our website.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: Martin Espada is the Featured Poet for 2024 SOMOS Poetry Month

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Deadline: April 11, 2024
Event Dates: April 12 – April 13, 2024
Award-winning poet Martin Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His new book of poems from Norton is “Floaters,” winner of the 2021 National Book Award. His other books of poems include “Vivas to Those Who Have Failed,” The Trouble Ball” and “The Republic of Poetry” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as others. Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. View flyer to learn more.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: The Colorado Authors League

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The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors become members to: keep up with changes in the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing, gain greater visibility for their writing, join a group of like-minded people who love writing. View our flyer to see new releases by members.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

March 2024 eLitPak :: First Pages Prize – Judge Edwidge Danticat

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Deadline: April 10, 2024 (April 24 extended)
First Pages Prize invites you to enter your first 5 pages of a longer work of fiction or creative nonfiction. Prizes in both fiction & creative nonfiction. 2024 Judge is Edwidge Dandicat! Open to un-agented writers worldwide, the prize supports emerging writers with cash awards, developmental mentoring, & agent consultation. View our flyer and visit our website for full information.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: 2nd Annual Changing Light Prize for a Novel-in-Verse

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Deadline: May 25, 2024
Livingston Press is accepting submissions of unpublished manuscripts for its annual Changing Light Prize for a Novel-in-Verse. There is no entry fee. Winner receives $500, publication, twenty copies, and a standard royalty contract. View our flyer and visit our website for guidelines.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: Flying South 2024 Contest is Open

$2,100 in Prizes

screenshot of the flyer for Flying South's 2024 Writing Contest
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Deadline: May 31, 2024
From March 1 to May 31, Flying South 2024 will be accepting entries for this year’s contest. There will be three categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. In each of the three categories the awards will be $400 for First Place, $200 for Second Place, and $100 for Third Place. Finalists will be awarded publication in Flying SouthView our flyer and visit our website to learn more.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: Announcing the Book Wheatley at 250 from Pangyrus Press

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Just published! Pangyrus Press announces Wheatley at 250, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Phillis Wheatley Peters’s historic and transformative Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral with exciting re-inscriptions by some of today’s most compelling poets: U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, Evie Shockley, Kiki Petrosino, Mahogany L. Browne, and more. View our flyer and learn more at our website.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: Last Call! Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest

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Deadline: April 1
Submit one humor poem to Winning Writers’ 2024 contest to win $2,000 and online publication. Accepts published and unpublished work. Co-sponsored by Duotrope. Recommended by Reedsy. Judged by Jendi Reiter and Lauren Singer. Winners announced on August 15. Visit our website and view our flyer for more information.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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March 2024 eLitPak :: 18th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards

National Indie Excellence 2024 Annual Book Awards flyer for the October 2023 eLitpak Newsletter
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Deadline: March 31, 2024
The 18th annual National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) are open to all English language printed books available for sale, including small presses, mid-sized independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. NIEA is proud to be a champion of self-publishing and independent presses. Monetary awards, sponsorships, and entry rules are described in detail on our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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Where to Submit Roundup: March 15, 2024

55 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

March is officially half over with today. We hope your writing and submission goals are still going strong this month. We are here once again to help you with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities. Don’t forget there are always a lot of deadlines on the 15 of each month, so don’t miss out!

Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness. Our March 2024 eLitPak was emailed just this week!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: March 15, 2024”

March 2024 eLitPak :: Contest and Submission Opportunity from Black Fox Literary Magazine!

Image Black Fox Literary Magazine's flyer for the 2024 Black Fox Prize
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Submit your fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction to Black Fox Literary Magazine’s Fairy Tale Remix Writing Prize! Deadline: March 31, 2024! We are also accepting free submissions for our summer 2024 print issue. Free subs close on May 31, 2024! View flyer and visit website to learn more.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

March 2024 eLitPak :: Poets Time to Submit Your Manuscript to The Washington Prize

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Deadline: March 15, 2024
Win $1,500 and publication by The Word Works. The contest is open to unpublished English language volumes of original poetry by a living Canadian or American writer at any stage of their career. Winner announced August 1 by series editor Andrea Carter Brown. View flyer to learn more and submit.

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Book Review :: The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

The premise of Lauren Groff’s latest novel, The Vaster Wilds, is simple: a girl runs away from a settlement in Colonial America for reasons the reader will discover later in the book. The storyline moves between her attempts to stay alive in an unwelcoming environment and her past life as a servant. Those two situations are not as different from one another as they initially seem.

While Groff tells a believable story about a girl several hundred years ago, she is just as interested in talking about what it means to be a female in the twenty-first century. One of the few times the girl encounters anybody outside the settlement, she sees two Indigenous men. When Groff writes, “And she was chilled to her soul, for it was reflexive, for she feared the fate of women anywhere, women caught alone on a dark street in a city, in a country lane far from human ears, in any place where there were no other people nearby to witness,” she could be describing everyday life for women.

Groff also reminds readers of men’s insatiable need to own and dominate, whether that’s women or land. Near the end of the novel, the narrator reflects, “The men of her own country had always felt this nothing deep within them; . . . it gave them a need to set their boots upon everything they saw.”

Groff is writing about what it means to be a woman in America today, living in fear of what men might do to them while watching what men do to the world around them.


The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. Riverhead Books, September 2023.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Magazine Stand :: Blink Ink – #55

Money. Blink Ink #55 asks, “Is it the root of all evil or a reward for solving problems? If you build a better mousetrap will money beat a path to your door?” Joan Rivers said, “Money isn’t the key to happiness but I always figured that with enough money, you could have a key made.” Contributors sent their best, unpublished stories of approximately 50 words about Money to fill the pages of this issue, including Lisa K. Buchanan, Ben Roth, Lisa Marie Lopez, John-Ivan Palmer, Howie Good, Westwood Diehl, Kathryn Shuff, Karen Crawford, Obaditan Oluwakorede, and more.

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Magazine Stand :: Humana Obscura – Spring 2024

The Spring 2024 issue of Humana Obscura features poetry, prose, and art by 87 new, emerging, and established contributors from around the globe, as well as interviews with poet Djana Kolaj and artists Rosemary H. Williams and Flick. Among the contributors for this issue: Jocelyn Ulevicus, Deb Baker, Lauren Carson, Sally Anderson Boström, Kristine Narvida, Ed Meek, E. D. Watson, Gabriel Welsch, Rachel Orta, Walt McLaughling, Zak Schafer, Stephanie Hanlon, Roberta Beach Jacobson, Amy Ratto Parks, Anna Lueck, Diane Elam, Abby Harding, Mary Anne Abdo, Pauline Le Bel, Eileen Begley, Melissa Laussmann, Jennifer Collins, Jocelyn Elizabeth, Tianming Zhou, Carrie Carter, Cristina Chaidez, Christie Gardiner, Ian Wells, Susanne Wurlitzer, Alison Reed, Elissa Greenwald, Jennifer Miller, Debbie Strange, Libby Saylor, Judith Rayl, William Ryan, Kimber Devaney, John Nizalowski, Kathryn P. Haydon, Katie Busick, Allison C. Macy-Steines, and Susan Ksiezopolski.

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

While The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt book is a couple of years old now, Ann Patchett recently revived interest in it during one of her weekly videos for Parnassus Books. New Directions publishes these storybooks, as they call them, that look like Little Golden Books from childhood and are short enough for readers to finish them in one sitting. This format reinforces the seemingly simplistic story DeWitt has crafted.

The main character—whom some call Marguerite—has been raised to appreciate luxury and valuable belongings. The title refers to the idea that only certain craftspeople or artisans can use raw materials well to create beautiful clothing and belongings. However, readers find out that Marguerite’s story is more complicated than first appears, and that she’s writing a memoir about that complicated past, one her publisher wants her to write differently.

Marguerite seems to understand little about the broader world, only aware of the sheltered life of luxury her mother exposed her to. There is little more to the plot than that, but there is much more to the book than that. Saying more would spoil the final third of this brief novel, but readers should know by now they can’t judge a book by its cover.


The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt. One of the Storybooks 2023 Bundle available from New Directions.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Magazine Stand :: Iowa Review – Fall 2023

In the Fall 2023 issue of The Iowa Review, readers encounter a broken oven, bad friends, EMTs, a sulking room, breast cancer, claw machines, and more with fiction by Hannah P. Thurman, Sophia Emmons-Bell, Emily Kiernan, Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, James Whorton Jr., and Alanna Schubach; poetry by Felicia Zamora, Kate DeLay, K. Avvirin Berlin, Chloe Martinez, Mag Gabbert, Dorsey Craft, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Jessica Greenbaum, Eric Roy, Steve Langan, Shelby Handler, and David Gorin; and nonfiction by Joseph Holt, Katherine Zlabek, Sean Bernard, Jason Sepac, Joshua Unikel, Lesley Jenike, Tan Tuck Ming, and Matthew J. C. Clark. Also featured is Jason Sepac’s visual essay “Polaroid Automatic 104 Land Camera.”

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week – March 11, 2024

Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!

Hailing from the great north of British Columbia, Canada, EVENT has been publishing for over 50 years, keeping the flame burning brightly! Cover art: “Creatures in the Flames” by Ben von Jagow.

Lake Effect: An International Literary Journal is a publication of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. This captivating cover features art by Aidong Ning and design by AJ Noyes.

Luna Station Quarterly invites readers to “the greatest show in speculative literature” with this enticing cover image, It Can’t See Me by Hannah Elizabeth. Available in print or digital formats.


Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Where to Submit Roundup: March 8, 2024

51 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

And like that the first full week of March is behind us and NewPages is back bringing you our where to submit roundup for the second Friday in March 204. Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness. Our next eLitPak is set to be released on Wednesday, March 13.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: March 8, 2024”

Magazine Stand :: The Baltimore Review – Winter 2024

This Winter 2024 issue includes the winners of The Baltimore Review’s winter contests selected by Judge Marion Winik: Eileen Frankel Tomarchio for flash fiction; Sasha Wade for prose poem; and Elizabeth J. Wenger for flash creative nonfiction.

Readers can also enjoy the full regular content, including poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by Christopher Blackman, Mike Cooper, Elizabeth DeKok, Derek Dirckx, Jessica Hammack, Kirsten Imani Kasai, Sophie Klahr, Derek Maiolo, Franz Jørgen Neumann, Bob Ostertag, Terrance Owens, Hayden Saunier, Eileen Frankel Tomarchio, Sasha Wade, and Elizabeth J. Wenger.

Many contributors also provide notes about their work, as well as audio recordings. All issues of The Baltimore Review back to Winter 2012 can be read online at no cost, and content from the online issues is also published in annual print compilations. Founded in 1996, The Baltimore Review showcases writers from Baltimore, across the U.S., and beyond.

New Books February 2024

With the end of the month comes our update of all the wonderful new and forthcoming titles that NewPages has received from small, independent, university, and alternative presses as well as author-published titles. You can view the full list here.

If you are a follower of our blog or a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, you can see several of the titles we received featured. For publishers or authors looking to be featured on our blog and social media, please visit our FAQ page.

[Thanks to our friends at The Book Store on the Hill in Richmond Hill, Georgia, for the image – and Happy Birthday!]

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – March 2024

The March issue of The Lake online journal of poetry and poetics is now available, featuring Arvilla Fee, George Franklin, Lorraine Gibson, David Illich, J. D. Isip, Matthew Johnson, Tom Kelly, Craig Kirchner, Ted McCarthy, Marian Kaplun Shapiro, J. R. Solonche. Readers can also enjoy book reviews of Hannah Stone’s The Invisible Worm and Philip Metre’s Fugitive Refugee.

The Lake‘s “One Poem Reviews” feature allows poets to share a single poem from a current collection for readers to sample. This month spotlights Marion McCready and Kelly Sargent.

Also included in this issue is “A Tribute to Louise Glϋck” by Cathy Porter, in which she writes, “I believe Glϋck always thought there was more to say, even if it wasn’t ‘pretty.’ She was grit and soul, the real stuff. And in the ‘real’ stuff she managed to find herself and persevere.”

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

New Magazines February 2024

If you can’t name more than a handful of quality literary magazines, it’s time for you to expand your experience! Check out the February 2024 New & Noted Literary & Alternative Magazine titles received here at NewPages.com!

Each month we offer readers a round-up of new issues with content information for our featured publications. The newest in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, artwork, photography, media, contest winners, and so much more!

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay the most up-to-date on all things literary!

Book Review :: Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss

Guest Post by Aiden Hunt

Acclaimed poet Diane Seuss continues her trend of publishing a new collection every three years with her sixth full-length, Modern Poetry. The title comes from the first textbook she encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college. Many of the poem titles are simple, using terminology from that book, like “Ballad,” “Allegory,” “An Aria,” and “Coda.”

As in her collection, frank:sonnets (2021), winner of numerous awards, Seuss plays with form here. A poem called “Villanelle” isn’t one, but begins, “I dreamed I was reading a villanelle / in front of a crowd.” The next poem, however, is titled, “Folk Song,” and it tells a more modern sort of villanelle, or peasant song, “Of selfhood I worked so hard to earn. Of work I worked so hard / to avoid. Of the working class. My class. Its itches and psychological riches.”

Seuss engages the imagination with straight talk about modern life as a working-class woman and relates both her lived experience and her complex relationship with her art in poems like “Ballad That Ends with Bitch,” with her Speaker relating, “At age ten, I turned away from tenderness. / I remember the moment. A flipping of a switch. / My house is a cold mess except for that thing in the corner. / Poetry, that snarling, flaming bitch.”


Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss. Graywolf Press, March 2024.

Reviewer bio: Aiden Hunt is a poet, editor, and critic, writing freelance book reviews and critical essays for literary publications. He is the creator and editor of Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, an online literary journal concerned with poetry chapbooks, their authors, and their publishers.

Spring into Indie Bookstores

NewPages Guide to Independent Bookstores in the U.S. and Canada is a great resource for finding local independent brick-and-mortar bookstores both in your area and as you travel. There is no better way to get to know a city than to check in with their local independent bookstore(s).

For authors and publishers, our list is a great resource for finding sales outlets and reading venues to promote your books.

For booksellers with stores, we offer free enhanced listings in our Guide to Independent Bookstores to help you connect with book lovers.

If we’re missing any stores you know about, drop us a quick note!

[Thanks to our friends at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the lovely photo!]

Magazine Stand :: World Literature Today – Mar/Apr 2024

“Writing the Polycrisis” headlines the March/April 2024 issue of World Literature Today with a cover illustration by Edel Rodriguez and content showcasing contributions by nine writers, mainly from the Global South. Additional highlights include a conversation with Tsotsil filmmaker María Sojob, Mai Al-Nakib’s booklist devoted to Palestinian women writers in translation, and a moving tribute to Sandra Day O’Connor. Noteworthy interviews with Bora Chung (South Korea) and Patrícia Melo (Brazil), creative nonfiction by Erica N. Cardwell, and a book review section brimming with trending must-reads also enliven the issue, making it your latest passport to the best new reading from around the world.

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Magazine Stand :: bioStories – 13.1

The newest issue of bioStories (13.1) features twenty new essays, including three of their 2023 Pushcart Prize nominees. Featured writers in this issue include Andrea Abbot, Dina Alvarez, Michelle Cacho-Negrete, Sally Carton, Yoon Chung, Madison Christian, Phil Cummings, Ria Parody Erlich, Cathy Fiorello, Lynne Golodner, Maria Hewett, Brian Huba, Pamela Kaye, Joshua David Laine, Sydney Lea, Julie Lockhart, Alli Mancz, Anthony J. Mohr, and Paolo Paciucci. Cover art is by another of the featured writers, Bradley Wester.

The majority of the creative nonfiction in this issue is in the form of personal narratives exploring everything from an Irish report on COVID isolation to journeys into the natural world and from a doctor’s experience with a young patient at the outset of the AIDS crisis to sustaining the camouflage required as a young gay man in a Catholic High School in 1969. All of bioStories’ content is free and accessible to read online.

Where to Submit Roundup: March 1, 2024

47 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

Happy Friday! I don’t know about March, but February didn’t want to be left out of the equation and decided after giving us some unseasonably warm days, we were in need of storms to be sent off like a lion. Let’s hope March decides to come in nice and soft like a newborn lamb. If you’re neck of the woods is giving you crazy weather, it’s a perfect time to work on writing, editing, and hitting your submission goals this year. How am I doing on mine? I haven’t started them yet, so do better than what I am doing with our first weekly roundup of March 2024.

Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: March 1, 2024”

New Magazines February 2024

While February is letting us know that it is, indeed, still winter, this makes it a great time to curl up with some new issues of literary magazines, doesn’t it? Don’t know where to start? Check out our updated New & Noted Literary & Alternative Magazines received during the month of February.

Each month we offer readers a round-up of new issues with content information for our featured publications. The newest in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, artwork, photography, media, contest winners, and so much more!

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay the most up-to-date on all things literary!

Magazine Stand :: december – 34.2

The newest issue of december features poetry by Jennifer Atkinson, Tyler Barton, Allisa Cherry, Dante Di Stefano, Jordan Escobar, Scott Frey, Albert Goldbarth, Tami Haaland, Hunter Hodkinson, Catherine Howl, Greg Jensen, Patrick Kindig, Christine Kwon, Winshen Liu, Shannan Mann, Kate Miano, Kylan Rice, Natalie Louise Tombasco, Donna Vorreyer, Laval Williams, John Sibley Williams, and James K. Zimmerman; fiction by Tamas Dobozy, JB Hwang, Erin MacNair, Ed McBride, Sean Theodore Stewart, Stephen Tuttle, and Christine Waresak; nonfiction by Gary Belsky, Chelsea Catherine, and Allen M. Price; and art by Jessica Diamond and Kyle Kogut with cover art by Mary Lou Zelazny, The Poet (2022).

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Martyr!, Akbar’s debut novel tells the story of Cyrus Shams, the only son of his mother Roya—who was killed when the United States shot down an Iranian passagener plane in 1988—and his father Ali, who dies shortly after Cyrus leaves for college, as if he has completed his job of raising his son. Cyrus is an alcoholic and an addict; he’s considering killing himself; but he’s also looking for a sign from God, as he is considering being a martyr, whatever that might mean for somebody who doesn’t have faith in anyone or anything beyond him.

The narrative focuses on Cyrus, but Akbar intersperses shorter chapters that follow Roya and Ali when they are younger, helping the reader understand who they were outside of Cyrus’s limited view. There are even a couple of chapters that focus on Arash, Cyrus’s uncle, whose role in the Iran-Iraq war was to ride around at night on horseback, wearing a black robe, portraying the angel Gabriel to convince the dying soldiers that their sacrifice was worthwhile.

Cyrus has a few brief conversations with Orkideh, a performance artist in New York City who is dying of breast cancer, as she sits in the museum, talking with anybody who sits down with her. Cyrus has begun writing a collection of poems about martrys in an attempt to understand them and himself, and he believes Orkideh might be one.

While the story itself is compelling, Akbar draws on his skills as a poet to create images and sentences that will resonate long after readers have finished the novel. While watching Cyrus struggle to find who he is is painful, Akbar’s writing makes the journey well worth the effort.


Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Alfred A. Knopf, January 2024.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Magazine Stand :: River Heron Review- 7.1

The February 2024 (7.1) issue of River Heron Review online poetry journal features works by Bethany Bowman, Cheryl Waitkevich, Hayden Saunier, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, K.Lipschutz, John A. Romagna, Shannon K. Winston, Julie Murphy, Kathy Nelson, Autumn Newman, Jen Stein, Tamara Kreutz, Martha Silano, Candice M. Kelsey, Emma Bolden, Darcy Smith, Tom Farr, Jane McKinley, and an interview with Rebecca Brock. Also included in this issue are works by 2023 River Heron Editors’ Prize Winner Amanda Hayden and Finalists Nico Sica, Patricia Wallace, and Emma Wynn.

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week – February 26, 2024

Travis D. Roberson‘s watercolor and oil on paper Feline at Sunset adorns the cover of issue 38 of Radar Poetry 38, an online journal of poetry and artwork.

Fatal Flaw December 2023 issue cover image

Themed “Witness,” this December 2023 issue of Fatal Flaw, an online literary and art magazine, features the work of Bristol UK-based illustrator, designer, and animator Alex Dimond.

Qu contemporary literary magazine from Queens University of Charlotte Winter 2024 features cover art by Thao Stovesand. Available in print with excerpts online, this issue includes “On Agenting” by Fred Leebron in The Writing Life section.


Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Come & Get It by Kiley Reid

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Kiley Reid has said that her second novel, Come & Get It, centers around money; that assertion is undoubtedly true—the novel even ends with a stop at Target. However, like all good novels, this one is about much more than the purported subject.

The reader follows three characters throughout the novel: Agatha, a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas who has also written a book about grief; Kennedy, a transfer student who has come to the university in the hopes of studying with Agatha; and Millie, the Resident Assistant for the dorm where Kennedy is staying.

Every relationship in the novel has the undercurrent of money’s influence, whether that’s Kennedy’s relationship with her suitemates Peyton and Tyler, both of whom believe Kennedy has way too much stuff for a dorm room; or Agatha’s romantic relationship with Robin, a dancer who earns little money; or Agatha’s paying Millie—who hopes to save enough money for a house—to help set up interviews with college students for her research. Class and race also complicate these relationships, not surprisingly when money is involved.

Reid interviewed thirty college students to help create her characters, and her research shows. She’s not condescending toward them, though, no matter how many poor decisions they might make. As in life, the adults are just as likely to make equally bad decisions. Though not a polemic, this novel seems designed to disprove the theory of the rational actor in any situation, economic or otherwise.


Come & Get It by Kiley Reid. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, January 2024.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Where to Submit Roundup: February 23, 2024

49 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

Happy Friday! I hope you are ending your week better than I am. We are back with 49 submission opportunities including calls from literary magazines, anthologies, and presses. You will also find writing contests, book prizes, and post-publication awards. Hopefully you can find a new home for your work.

Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: February 23, 2024”

Magazine Stand :: Rogue Agent – February 2024

The February 2024 online open-access issue of Rogue Agent features poetry and artwork that investigates the question: “What is it like to live in the body?” Contributors to the newest issue (with an excerpt from each) include Shloka Shankar (“Lanterns / glow brightly on a summer night, looking / for something you could sing but you don’t.”), Denise Alden (“Imagine quaffing thirteen beers in an evening then popping / up like a daisy the next morning.”), Melanie McCabe (“The tongue abides, sibilant / as ever in its wise tree. I let it beguile.”), Trystan Popish (“on days like this, I do not contain / organs, bones, or veins, / but a body of water, coursing with currents / I can’t control”), Horus Balogh-Zanin (“The first scars on my skin the tiny homes of other living creatures.”), Justin Vicari (“Men sometimes lead two lives. I knew this from an early age.”), Melissa Fite Johnson (“Each year, I decide to forget. Each year, I can’t.”), Xiaoly Li (“It was your thirst / that could not be doused.”), Jeannine Hall Gailey (“Fifty is the year a woman changes from waif to wolf, / from virgin to witch.”), and Michele Sharpe (“My future snaps like a rusted latch / and hasp. I live happily severed after.”). Rogue Agent publishes new content monthly with submissions open year-round.

Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Absolution by Alice McDermott

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Absolution, Alice McDermott’s latest novel, is technically an epistolary novel, though it doesn’t read like one. It’s an exchange of only three, long letters between Tricia and Rainey, mainly focusing on Charlene, Rainey’s mother. Tricia and Charlene met in Vietnam as the war was beginning there, both married to men who worked for the American government, but who were not actually part of it or the military. Rainey was a young girl then, but she remembers Tricia and reaches out to her to inform her of the death of a common acquaintance.

Charlene is, as almost everybody describes her, a “dynamo,” always working to try to do good, whether that’s raising money for toys and candy for children in the hospital or visiting a leper colony to provide them with nice clothing. Tricia is much more passive, but Charlene is able to use her shyness as a way to get other women to invest in her ideas, passing them off as Tricia’s.

The novel portrays the women, even Charlene, as hemmed in by their gender, exploring their role in a place where they have no choice but to be, much like the soldiers, but for a very different reason. The main question of the novel, though, is who needs absolution and why: while the obvious answer is the U.S. government and those associated with the horrors of the war, there’s enough unspoken guilt in this world to go around.


Absolution by Alice McDermott. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2023.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Sponsored :: New Book :: Marriage 2001: A Bruised Odyssey

cover of Marriage 2002: A Bruised Odyssey by J. W. Young

Marriage 2001: A Bruised Odyssey, Poetry by J. W. Young

unPublications, February 2024

Marriage 2001: A Bruised Odyssey by J. W Young is a book of poetry & writings which deals with the confines of marriage when defined and marred by subjugation, domestic abuse, and censorship in modern times. It is Young’s first published literary work. Though many of the writings were destroyed, this book contains survivors. The poetic expressions served as a means to cope and endure. Marriage 2001: A Bruised Odyssey is a journey of hope, pain, grief and the difficult pathway to reclaiming a sense of self.

New Lit on the Block :: Postcard

Who doesn’t love getting a postcard in the mail? Especially one with contemporary art and poetry and no pithy guilt about not being somewhere else. Postcard is the brainchild of Editor-in-Chief and Designer David Wojciechowski who was initially interested in making broadsides but fell in love with the smaller, more economical postcard.

“I thought it was a funky idea for a literary magazine to be printed in that form,” Wojciechowski says. “Then I began thinking about the postcards, the poems, being sent through the mail. I loved the idea of people sending a poem to a friend—not just a link to a poem, but a physical object they can tape over their desk or wherever they need it. I also have this image in my head of a mail carrier stopping to read a poem; that image kind of motivated me to keep going with the idea.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Postcard”

Book Review :: In a Body by Emily Hockaday

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

In a Body, Emily Hockaday’s second poetry collection considers a body that “feels / less and less like mine,” and what it might be like to be “outside / of time.” The movement from corporeal to incorporeal suggests trauma and an “interconnected web of pain.” The poems, offered to readers by a mother of a daughter located at the crossroads of a “diagnosis” and “the other side of us,” allude to substance abuse, mental health, chronic pain, breast cancer, and a father’s death.

Given that, it is no wonder that the narrator declares: “I want to be like the Earth, / but I want to be treated better.” Seen via the “micro and macro,” the body of these poems is “compartmentalized” and “becoming”; the body is seen in relation or comparison; the body is seen “after,” “in,” “as,” “at,” “of,” “above,” “before,” “from,” and “through” “momentum” and “metamorphosis.”Poem titles offer the body “Becoming the Owl,” the “Body in the Spring”; “Body Above Water” or “Body as Wood,” etc.

The poet returns to the “Body as Tree” idea several times. When the body is seen as a tree, the mycelia connecting it to other trees is analogous to the “power” that neural pain “wields,” and the network of shared grief over personal and communal loss. Both the narrator’s diagnoses and the death of her father tell us the “body / is ephemeral.”

These poems remind us that we live precariously with “how many batteries / lie below the surface” and our “humanity’s failures.” Survival and recovery depend on “the knowledge that / anything can happen.”

Hockaday’s In a Body “understand[s] what it means / to be” in a “future … never / imagined.”


In a Body by Emily Hockaday. Small Harbor Publishing, October 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems appear.

Event :: Friday Night Comics Workshops at SAW

The Sequential Artists Workshop logo image

The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) offers free weekly online comics workshops on Fridays, each hosted by a professional cartoonist who leads participants through a structured drawing and/or storytelling exercise. The series was originally started by The Believer (‘We Believe in Comics’).

SAW is an online and in-person grassroots, non-profit comics school located in Gainesville, Florida, founded in 2011 by indie cartoonist Tom Hart. “At SAW we help budding cartoonists discover their own path in visual storytelling. Students learn core comics techniques like storytelling, character creation, panel design, storyboarding, inking and lettering.”

Numerous working groups meet via their online SAW Mighty Network Community, and the SAW Certificate Program enrolls every fall for a nine-month intensive instruction in drawing for comics, comic storytelling, comics history, and more. Many SAW graduates from the past ten years have gone on to publish full-length works.

Book Review :: Layers by Pénélope Bagieu

Pénélope Bagieu’s newest memoir collection of comics, Layers, seems to follow the standard course of symbolism in deconstructing a past through layers of memories, some connected experiences, and some seemingly random recalls. However, by the close of the book, I felt more like I had been layered in warm comforting blankets of someone’s past, perhaps with a few snags and worn patches along the way.

Bagieu’s style is disarming in its simplicity. This black-and-white collection focuses each frame on a particular character or character object with very little if any scenery and minimal props. The focus is on narrative details, some of which follow a particular arc, such as the life of a family cat whose bad behaviors the family puts up with like saints, Bagieu’s recounting her involvement with physical activities that stem from a misunderstanding in her youth, and a lifelong battle with heat – as in the utility.

Other stories in the collection center on Bagieu’s experiences with sexual harassment, abuse, and just general crappy behavior, whether directed at her or others. The collection was built upon journal pages from Bagieu’s youth, now rendered in hindsight as an adult, but Bagieu retains the sense of being merely an observer and reporter here for the reader to make their own decisions in response to the image sequences.

Adding to the layering effect of the reading is the fact that each segment is followed by a blank page. Somewhat luxurious, but essential to the reading, as with the closing of each piece, that blank page allows the reader to rest a beat and let the story and its meaning settle in before just plowing ahead to the next. This is especially critical to pieces like the harrowing “Florence,” which are so fast-paced, that an extra page of rest is needed for the reader to allow the weight of the narrative to settle.

The closing stories are of strength and gumption, ending the collection with an adult Bagieu wrapping her youthful self in a blanket in one and meeting up with her grandmother in the afterlife in another. These provide closure to the stories collected here, and upend the trope of dismantling the layers of one’s life, as here, the reader feels more layered into the stories and the experiences they provided.

Wrapped in these memories, the reader’s own now entwined with the author’s, Layers feels as comforting as a life well lived.


Layers: A Memoir by Pénélope Bagieu. First Second :01, October 2023.

Reviewer bio: NewPages.com Editor Denise Hill reviews books based on personal interest.

Book Review :: A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery by Tina Carlson

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

The verse and prose poems of Tina Carlson’s third collection, A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery, give tender attention to the lives of girls and women in history, our communities, in legend, myth, literature, and the poet’s life. Our narrator is a daughter who reckons with her life as a child caught between an agoraphobic father and an irresponsible mother who requires “mother me.” Around the family table, “she is they,” burdened by “the weight of words caught in her parents’ throats.”

The poems center on trauma related to intergenerational abuse along matrilineal lines and what follows “after generations of war” along patrilineal lines, but everyone within these poems has their personal, societal, and existential “battles.” Throughout this collection, the poet endeavors to give voice to the oppressed and that which is “made of scars,” to figure out “what to give up and what to throw away,” and how to “untether the tongue.”

Though tongue tie surgery is performed to improve breastfeeding, it has lasting implications for the children and adults who undergo the quick, effective surgery. Results such as these poems, speaking from their wish “to be unarmored.”

In these poems, there is an alternative to sorrow; there is perseverance.


A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery by Tina Carlson. University of New Mexico Press, August 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems appear.

February 2024 eLitPak :: Changing Skies Now Accepting Submissions for Fall Issue!

image of Changing Skies flyer for Fall 2024 issue call for submissions
click image to open full-size flyer

Changing Skies Creative Nonfiction Journal is accepting submissions for online and print publication. We accept creative nonfiction writing on living through the climate crisis. We also accept forms of art including paint, drawing, photography, and more! Read our latest issues and submission details at our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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