NewPages Blog
The winner of the 2016 Orison Poetry Prize, Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom by Rebecca Aronson, will be published next month on April 4, 2017. Hadara Bar-Nadav, who selected the winner, calls the collection, “[e]xplosive, turbulent, haunting magnetic,” saying that “[m]ortality and death undergrid Aronson’s fantastical visions, where a child becomes a seagull, a woman turns tarantula, and a house threatens to fill with blood.”
Find sample poem “Wish” at the Orison Books website, where you can also find out more about Aronson and pre-order copies, which are currently on sale, a couple saved bucks you can set aside for even more poetry.
Books :: 2015 New Measure Poetry Prize Winner Published
Published March 14, 2017 Posted By Katy Haas
Parlor Press’s annual New Measure Poetry Prize (now open for 2017 submissions until the end of June) awards a poet a cash award of $1,000 and publication of an original manuscript.
The 2015 winner, This History That Just Happened, by Hannah Craig, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa, was published at the beginning of the year. Komunyakaa says of his selection, “This History That Just Happened places the reader at the nexus where rural and city life converge, bridging a world personal and political, natural and artful, in a voice always uniquely hers.”
Craig has also won the 2016 Mississippi Review Prize and her manuscript was a finalist for the Akron Poetry Prize, the Fineline Competition, and the Autumn House Poetry Prize. Stop by the Parlor Press website to learn more about Craig and purchase her debut poetry collection digitally or in print.
Begun in 1989, Reach Out and Read is a program wherein medical professionals “prescribe” books and reading aloud to children “as a means of fostering the language-rich interactions between parents and their young children that stimulate early brain development.” Now, the Reach Out and Read model exists in all 50 states, with almost 1,500 sites distributing 1.6 million books per year. The program serves 4.7 million young children and their families each year, “including one in four children living in poverty in this country.” The organizers hope to grow each year, envisioning that support for books and reading will become a regular part of every child’s checkup. For more information about programs near you and information about how to get involved, visit Reach Out and Read online. Winner
“Operation” by Scott Gloden
Second Place
“White Out” by Caitlin O’Neil
Third Place
“Malheur Refuge” by Rick Attig
Honorable Mentions
“Little Sister” by Yin Ren
“Million and a Half” by Kevin Klinskidorn
“The Weight of Gravity” by Denise Schiavone
“The Caveman” by Rachel Engelman
“Good Listener” by Ally Glass-Katz
The Master's Review is currently accepting submissions for its annual Anthology Prize. This year's judge is Roxanne Gay.
Diode celebrates ten years of publishing "electropositive poetry": poetry that "excites and energizes"; poetry that uses language that "crackles and sparks." Issue 10.1 features works from over 40 poets as well as two full-length collections, Starlight & Error by Remica Bingam-Risher and quitter by Paula Cisewski, several chapbooks, interviews and reviews. All of Diode's is available for readers to enjoy online. 
This month's featured collaboration from Broadsided Press , "Final Descent into Phoenix" with poem by Julie Swarstad Johnson and art by Kara Page, has been months in the making. "We chose Julie Swarstad Johnson's poem for publication from our open submissions over a year ago," notes the Broadsided Editorial Team. "We sent it out to artists to see who would 'dibs' it in November, in January artist Kara Page sent us what she'd created, then our designer found a way to bring both together into a single letter-sized pdf, and finally we asked poet and artist what they thought of the results," with the conversation between artist and poet published on the Broadsided website.Broadsided posters are available for free download and postering all about town. Become a Broadsided Vector today!
Each June, Rescue Press accepts submissions for the Black Box Poetry Contest for full-length poetry collections open to poets at any stage in their writing careers. The latest Black Box Poetry winner will be released later this month (March 15): What Was It For by Adrienne Raphel. Judge Cathy Park Hong calls the debut full-length collection “feral and full of feverish delight.” She continues, “Raphel takes Victorian nonsense verse into the twenty-first century and transforms it to her own strange and genius song.”
Readers can learn more about What Was It For at the publisher’s website, where they can also find Raphel’s bio with more information about the writer and pre-order copies.
Things Impossible to Swallow poems by Pamela Garvey is the newest in the 2River Chapbooks Series. 2River chapbooks can be read online, or to make your own print copy, click "Chap the Book" to download a PDF, which you can then print double-sided, fold, and staple to have a personal copy of Garvey's chapbook. There are currently 24 chapbooks available for free download for readers to enjoy. Books :: Diode Editions First Full-Length Book Contest Winners
Published March 08, 2017 Posted By Katy Haas
Diode Editions recently held their very first full-length book contest and have announced two co-winners: Remica Bingham-Risher’s Starlight & Error, and Paula Cisewski’s quitter.
Starlight & Error retells through the lens of imagined memory the legacies of love between aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, children and their children’s children. The poems ask how we transcend the mistakes of those who made us, and who will save us.
quitter is a “thoughtful protest in form, line, and ideology.” The collection invites readers to ask ourselves what we’ve tried, and if we’ve tried hard enough, challenging us to continue looking for solutions.
Learn more about the prize-winning collections at the Diode Editions website where readers can read advance praise and order copies.
The Fall 2016 issue of The MacGuffin features the winners of the 21st National Poet Hunt Contest along with commentary from Judge Li-Young Lee.First Place
"Pedro" by Elisabeth Murawski
Honorable Mentions
"Things to Know if You Live Here" by Marc Sheehan
"A Woman, Conjured" by Janet Greenberg
The 2017 contest will be judged by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Cover image: "Happy Summer from My Ivory Tower" by Roopa Dudley.
In February, Black Lawrence Press released Retribution Binary by Ruth Baumann, which advance praise calls “a study in wreckage and palpable absence” that is “Part dreamscape, part gutter-bucket realism” (Marcus Wicker). Retribution Binary is the winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, and Baumann is no stranger to winning chapbook prizes, winning the Salt Hill Dead Lake Chapbook Contest in 2014 and the Slash Pines Chapbook Contest in 2015. Copies of Retribution Binary can be found on the Black Lawrence Press website, where readers can learn more about Baumann, and read an excerpt.Also released last month was the winner of the 2016 Georgia Poetry Prize, Sun & Urn by Christopher Salerno, chosen by Thomas Lux. Lux calls the collection “madly imaginative, and, ultimately, a brilliant and deeply human book,” imploring readers to read it three times. Salerno’s fourth poetry collection, Sun & Urn is now available from the University of Georgia Press website, a book made from “the wild stuff of grief and loss.” Check out the press’s website for more information.
"Calmly on Fire," a found photograph and collage on paper by Lorna Simpson, makes it difficult for readers to look away from Hotel Amerika Winter 2017.
Published in Ireland, this spring 2017 issue of Into the Void cover features "Two Boys in the Woods" by Refael Salem.
Unusual beauty seems to be my theme this week, finishing off with "Red Heart Boat" by Andy Levine on the cover of the online Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine. 
The University of Iowa Press brings readers a real treat: the lost novel of Walt Whitman, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle. While we’re familiar with Leaves of Grass, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle was serialized in a newspaper under a pseudonym, read with little fanfare, and then disappeared.
It wasn’t until 2016 that it was found by Zachary Turpan, a literary scholar. While following a deep paper trail into the Library of Congress, he stumbled upon the only surviving copy of Witman’s lost novel.
Now, after lying in wait for over 160 years, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle is available for modern readers both digitally and in print at the University of Iowa Press website.
Issue #55 (Spring 2017) of Rattle includes a selection of poems on the theme "Civil Servants." "The collection features seventeen civil servants — poets who have worked for various government agencies, including the EPA, the FDA, the CIA, the Census Bureau, and many more," write the editors. "Apparently working for the public produces a dry sense of humor, because many of the poems lean sardonic. These poets are also smart and down-to-earth, and just may restore your faith in bureaucracy." Some of the writers included: Lisa Badner, Dane Cervine, A.M. Juster, Bruce Neidt, Pepper Trail, Jane Wheeler, John Yohe. See a full list of contributors here. 
Issue 43.2 (Spring/Summer 2017) of BWR features winners of their 2016 Contest:Fiction judged by Sofia Samatar
“Videoteca Fin del Mundo” by Ava Tomasula y Garcia
Nonfiction judged by T Clutch Fleischmann
“Whatever” by Rocket Caleshu
Poetry judged by Hoa Nguyen
“The Autobiographical Subject ”Kirsten Ihns
Each winner received $1,000 and publication, and each runner-up received $100. For a full list of winners and runners-up as well as judge's comments on each, visit the BWR website here.
Cover image: "The Art of Sealing Ends" by Nakeya Brown.
Editor Wayne Miller has announced several changes to Copper Nickel with its recent re-launch, including paying contributors: "starting with issue 24, we'll be paying $30 per printed page. (We wish it could be more!)" Indeed, it is more than nothing, which is a great step for any literary publication to be able to take. Additionally, issue 24 of Copper Nickel includes a flash fiction portfolio featuring 22 works selected by Fiction Editors Teague Bohlen and Joanna Luloff. Cover image: "Tape Loops" by Eleanor King. 
"This iteration of the Sewanee Review [Winter 2017], designed by Peter Mendelsund and Oliver Munday, signifies the first substantial redesign this magazine has undergone since Allen Tate's commissioning of legendary printer P.J. Conkwright in autumn, 1944," writes Managing Editor Robert Walker. He thanks the designers "for their beautiful, idiosyncratic vision, which so seamlessly incorporates the old into the new." NewPages agrees.
The Gettysburg Review Spring 2017 whimsical cover is a detail of "The Young Owl" by Kevin Sloan.
"Stress Test" by Eugenia Loli is the eye-catching cover art on The Missouri Review v39 n4 (2016) 
Winner "Riverbanks and Honeysuckle" by Alysia Sawchyn [pictured]
[Sawchyn's story is available to read online here.]
Runners-Up
"Planning to Be Amazed" by Daryl Scroggins
"At the Dog Park" by Derek Updegraff
"It bears acknowledging that Drunken Boat 24 arrives in the wake of a substantial loss," opens Nick Potter's editorial to the comics section of the newest issue. "Amid the varied responses," he writes, "I’ve noticed a subset of my friends on Facebook who have updated their profile pictures to a black square. In our increasingly globalized, increasingly visual culture, this act seems intuitive, marking absence, marking erasure, marking the digital equivalence of donning black in mourning, marking a kind of death. In comics, the filled-black panel has often been used as contextual shorthand for death—a kind of visual euphemism in the structural language of the form."Potter goes on to offer several panels of black squares, acknowledging the loss of famous people, those whose lives taken made news for their injustice, and for victims of the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, as well as a couple personal losses from Potter's family. "And so," he closes, "as we’ve endured so many black panels this year, it’s worth noting that, in comics, all panels, black or otherwise, are given meaning by the panels that surround them. And how we choose to fill those panels, as artists and patrons, comprises the politics with which we envision humanity."
Executive Editor Jim Hicks opens the newest issue of The Massachusetts Review: The Music Issue with this from his introduction: "For this particular quarterly, given that 'public affairs' is the kicker to our moniker, the first reaction of readers might well be, 'Why?' Certainly if you think of music as entertainment, as remedy or therapy, you might not see such a theme as urgent. And yet what social movement, what new political formation, hasn’t had its unforgettable soundtrack? Where, after all, do those in the struggle find the force and inspiration to keep moving forward, to get up, stand up, in this world full of tunnels and only occasional light? What brings them together, what lifts their voices, what beats the drum?"The front cover features "The Music Issue, 2016" created for The Massachusetts Review by Bianca Stone, and a full list of contributors with access to some of the works can be found here.
The Boiler winter 2017 online quarterly of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction features this stunning scene "Horses in Winter" photograph by Ellumyne.
Chagrin River Review online journal of fiction and poetry is edited by faculty at Lakeland Community College, outside of Cleveland, Ohio. The cover photo for their December 2016 issue, with its unique road reflections, is by Michael Kinkopf.
I'm pretty sure that's a cockroach orchestra portrayed on the cover of Cleaver online lit mag #16: "The Maestro” by Orlando Saverino-Loeb. Spoon River Poetry Review 2016 Editors' Prize Winners
Published February 09, 2017 Posted By Denise Hill
First Place Winner“The Secret of White” by Nancy Hewitt
(pictured)
1st Runner-Up
"Ramadan Aubade" by Leila Chatti
2nd Runner-Up
"Christ is a Great Blue Heron" by Jennie Maria Malboeuf
Honorable Mention
"Autumn Aubade with Pigeons" by Leila Chatti
The 2016 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest as selected by final judge Jaimy Gordon are featured in the January/February 2017 issue of Kenyon Review. Included with an introduction by Associate Editor Kirsten Reach are First Prize Winner “Butter” by Eve Gleichman and Runners Up “Dance of the Old Century” by Dan Reiter and “The Babymoon” by Adam Soto. Information about the 2017 prize and a list of winners, including honorable mentions, can be read here, along with the full pieces as published in the print edition. Editor David H. Lynn comments on the history and philosophy behind this contest in his Editor's Note: What Place Literary Contests? 
Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction January 2017 features three new craft essays: "The Essay and the Art of Equivocation" in which Brandon R. Schrand [pictured] considers our ability to equivocate artfully in the essay; "Truth & Delight: Resisting the Seduction of Surfaces" in which Peter Selgin examines the need to resist total seduction by sounds and surfaces; and "Beyond 'Craft for Craft’s Sake': Nonfiction and Social Justice" with Rachel Tolliver and M. Sausun discussing nonfiction and social justice in the new political era. Brevity's full content can be read online. 
Aimee Bungard is the featured artist in the Winter 2017 issue of The Carolina Quarterly, with "Eyeris" on the cover and a portfolio of her work inside, in a style which she describes as "ecological expressionist."
Mud Season Review publishes one story, one portfolio of poems, one essay or piece of narrative nonfiction, and visual art online monthly. The newest issue features artwork by Talal Alyan, who "renders loss into concise and vivid images that feel like an assault on the soul."
Posit online publishes "finely crafted, innovative, contemporary literature and visual art. Our tastes are broad, but we lean towards the experimental." And the cover art of issue #12 is proof positive, featuring Steve DeFrank's “Big Hairy Mess." 