NewPages Blog

Saturday is the day! April 29 is the 4th Annual Independent Bookstore Day. Indie bookstores across the United States are gearing up to celebrate with exclusive items, literary activities, readings, author signings, giveaways, and more this upcoming Saturday.

Find a great indie bookstore in your area on the NewPages Guide to Independent Bookstores and show your support.

The Wallace Stevens Journal Editors Steven Gould Axelrod and Natalie Gerber introduce readers to the Spring 2017 special issue feature Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost: A Reconsideration with these words: "One of the well-worn ironies of epoch-fashioning in literature is its tendency to position literary oeuvres in ways that serve the need for distinction and contrast without attesting to the surprising overlaps and conjunctions that exist in the lives and careers of the era’s foremost practitioners. This, in a sentence, is the story of Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens, two modernist American poets who have emerged—more so than most of their peers—at opposite ends of the modernist spectrum."

For a full list of contents, click here. Those with access to the journal through Project Muse can read full text; others can read the beginning portions of each entry.

When he sought to name his newly envisioned academic journal for high school writers, Theodore Bass said the word ‘curious’ embodied what he wanted to do with the publication. In French, the word is ‘curieux,’ which Bass thought had a nicer ring to it. Thus, Curieux Academic Journal was christened.

Nightboat Books publishes the winners of the annual Nightboat Poetry Prize, the 2015 winner to be released next month: No Dictionary of a Living Tongue by Duriel E. Harris. Judge Kazim Ali says of the poetry collection:

No Dictionary of a Living Tongue is formidable in its explorations of art, citizenship, and life as a body amid the social, political, and electronic networks that define us, hold us together, bind us. [ . . . ] An elegant use of sound couples with a keen and roving intelligence and a fierce commitment to social justice to create a unique and powerful collection of poems.

Paging through the poetry collection, I was struck by the variety in forms, visually arresting before even reading the content. I was especially drawn to the fold-out poem “Danger, Live Feed” on pages 69-70, which warrants tearing out and framing (if the idea of tearing apart a book doesn’t make you cringe, that is).

Check out the Nighboat Books website for more insight into Harris’s No Dictionary of a Living Tongue, where you will also find a PDF preview and a link to order from SPD.

In Poet Lore's Spring/Summer 2017 feature World Poets in Translation, Hodna Nuernberg translates Togolese poet Anas Atakora. Nuernberg introduces the poet, "Atakora writes in a French that is simultaneously limpid and roiled by the undercurrents of Kotokoli, his mother tongue. . . Atakora's genius lies in his ability to draw inspiration from this duality, creating a poetic voice that plays with oppositions as he develops a personal lyricism rich with polyphony and intertextuality."

Nuernberg goes on to explain, "Atakora considers himself to be among the third generation of Francophone Togolese poets, tracing his lineage back to the neo-Négritude writers of the 1960s and 70s. The content-driven and politically engaged writing that characterized the work of the neo-Négritude writers is tempered in Atakora's work by his interest in stylistic invention and by his commitment to liberating poetic language from formal constraints, a sensibility he shares with writers of the second generation, who came of age during the cultural renewal of the 1990s."

Poet Lore Spring/Summer 2017 is available for single issue purchase in the NewPages Webstore.

Recently chosen as a NewPages Editor’s Pick, Inside My Pencil by Peter Markus (Dzanc Books, March 2017) recounts poetry lessons taught to children in Detroit public schools. Markus, an award-winning writer and a writer-in-residence with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project of Detroit, sees the magic children hold inside their pencils and shares it with readers in this nonfiction book.

We start with Markus on his first day in the schools and then continue on to read his lessons on similes, metaphor, on the verb to be, the power of imagination. In prose that is poetic in itself, he brings us into the classroom and feeds us lines his students came up with in response. The creativity and imagination of the kids is a joy to read. In one chapter they define what beauty is, and in another, they turn love into metaphors, each line a beautiful display of the magic inside their pencils.

Inside my Pencil is available from the Dzanc Books website where readers can learn more.

The Santa Fe Writers Project hosts their Literary Awards Program each year since 2000. At the beginning of April, they published the 2015 grand prize winner: Magic for Unlucky Girls by A.A. Balaskovits. Selected by Emily St. John Mandel, the winning short story collection retells traditional fairy tales, taking familiar tropes and weaving them into modern stories of horror and hope.

From the publisher’s website:

From carnivorous husbands to a bath of lemons to whirling basements that drive people mad, these stories are about the demons that lurk in the corners and the women who refuse to submit to them, instead fighting back . . .

Find out more about Magic for Unlucky Girls at the SFWP website, where readers can order copies, check out the author’s website, and stop by the Awards Program page, submissions currently open until the tail end of July.

The Spring 2017 issue of Boulevard (vol. 32 nos. 2 & 3) features the winner of their 2016 Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. Contest Judge Edward Nobles selected the works of Stacey Walker, who received $1000 and publication of her three poems, "Reading the Signals," "Pockets," and "Grace in War." Honorable mentions went to Hannah Leisman and Craig Van Rooyen. (Cover art: Fafal Olbinski, The Eye of the Medusa, 2017)

The Spring 2017 issue of The Georgia Review, in addition to celebrating 70 continuous years of publication, also features the 2016 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize Winner: "Still Lifes and Landscapes" by Emily Wolahan. In addition to publication, the winner receives $1000. The 2017 poetry contest is still open, with Naomi Shihab Nye as the final judge.

Michigan Quarterly Review has announced its annual prizes awarded to authors whose works were published in the magazine during the previous year.

Lawrence Foundation Prize
Ruchama King Feuerman [pictured] has won the $1,000 Lawrence Foundation Prize for 2016. The prize is awarded annually by the Editorial Board of MQR to the author of the best short story published that year in the journal. Feuerman’s "Kill Fonzie" appeared in the Winter 2016 issue.

Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize
John Rybicki has won the 2016 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually to the author of the best poem or group of poems appearing that year in the Michigan Quarterly Review. His poem “A River Is Not a Watery Rope,” appeared in the Winter 2016 issue.

Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets
Eric Rivera has won the 2016 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets, which is awarded annually to the best poet appearing in MQR who has not yet published a book. The award, which is determined by the MQR editors, is in the amount of $500.

For more information about each of the winners, visit the MQR website here.

Erin McIntosh is the featured artist in this 70th anniversary issue of The Georgia Review, with one of her works from Geometric Series on the cover and several more inside along with an introduction about the artist and her work.
"Forgetten" by Jane Zwinger on the Spring/Summer 2017 issue of Glimmer Train is a welcome symbol of spring that reflects the blossoming trees lining our city streets this April.
The cover of Ruminate Spring 2017 features an untitled piece from the 2017 Kalos Visual Art Prize Winner Lucas Moneypenny. More of his work as well as that from Second Place winner Chakila L. Hoskins and Honorable Mention Carolyn Mount is included in the issue.

The Drowning Gull online biannual of art, nonfiction, poetry and fiction hails an eclectic editorial staff: Tiegan Dakin, a poet and artist living in New South Wales, Australia; Rebecca Valley, poet and writer living in Washington state; Shonavee Simpson, Australian freelancer from Newcastle; and Katelyn Dunne, a Chicago native currently living in Kentucky to attend university. “Living in different parts of the world,” says Dakin, “makes communication difficult at times. But we all have a common love of publishing, so we try tirelessly to make it work.”

The April 2017 broadside collaboration from Broadsided Press is "Overheard at the Zoo" with poetry by Jessica Johnson and art by Se Thut Quon. Poetry lovers/activists are encouraged to print the free PDF broadside and become a vector by posting the work around your town, campus, workplace - wherever the world could use just a bit more poetry.

The Florida Review has launched a new online component Aquifer, with free weekly literary features (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and graphic narrative), as well as interviews, book reviews, and digital stories. Later this year, Aquifer will open up submissions for this online content. Editors also hope that Aquifer: The Florida Review Online will open up the possibility for even more features, becoming a fully multi-media arts and letter site. We look forward to this great new innovation for TFR!

The end of the school year is just around the corner (or two), and summer begs the promise of hot, lazy days spent reading poolside, on the beach, in the park, indoors with the AC full blast. Or maybe you're gearing up to travel across the state, nation, or globe. Now is the perfect time to order a grab bag of lit mags from the NewPages Webstore! Take your pick of single issues of some of the best lit in print, and have as many as you order shipped for just $3.50/flat rate (see webstore for details). Get summer reading ready now!

The winner of the 2016 FIELD Poetry Prize, Chance Divine by Jeffrey Skinner, was published at the end of last month. The editors, David Young and David Walker, selected the collection from a group of submissions they say was one of the strongest in the prize’s 20-year history. However, Chance Divine made an impression, the editors “coming back to it with increasing admiration. It’s a notably ambitious book, unafraid to ask large questions about contemporary physics, poetry, and faith, and the relationships between them—but with a wit and inventiveness that lead to unpredictable, exhilarating results.”

On the Oberlin College Press website, readers can find three excerpted poems, more information about the collection, and a way to order a copy. 

Photograph "Paula/Window #1" by Roger Mullins on the cover of v16 i2 of Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley inspired this week's theme of lit mag covers.
A detail of "The History of Nature" by Brad Kunkle on the Spring 2017 issue of Arroyo is from his Light & Leaf series, paintings "embellished with genuine gold and silver leaf, which reflects light in a room differently than paint.Therefore, they can appear contrastive and unique when the point of view or source of light has changed."
And for a dose of humor, Issue #49 of Pembroke Magazine features a photograph taken by Editor Jessica Pitchford at the annual John Blue Cotton Festival in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Love it.

In 2015, on the anniversary of his wife's death as a result ovarian cancer, Hyong Yi wrote 100 love notes and, along with his two children, handed them out to random passers by on the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina. The three-line poems were written as conversational love notes between Hyong and his wife, reading "Beloved, follow me to the top of the mountain. Hold my hand; I’m afraid of falling. Don’t let me go.” and “I don’t need a test to tell me who to love. I believe in you and me. I do until death do us part.”

Friends encouraged Hyong to create a website to commemorate his commitment to his wife, and now The #100 Love Notes Project: A Love Story book has been published by Lorimer Press. This beautifully crafted collection features the work of 17 artists commissioned by Hyong Li to illustrate his 100 three-line poems.

This historical tome edited by Anselm Berrigan has just been released from Wave Publishing: "The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was founded in 1966 for the overlapping circles of poets in the Lower East Side of New York.These interviews from The Poetry Project Newsletter form a kind of conversation over time between some of the late 20th century's most influential poets and artists, who have come together in this legendary venue over the past 50 years." Poets/artists interviewed include: Akilah Oliver, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Barbara Henning, Bruce Andrews, Charles North, David Henderson, Eileen Myles, erica kaufman, Harryette Mullen, Judith Goldman, Larry Fagin, Magdalena Zurawski, Peter Bushyeager, Red Grooms, Sheila Alson, Tina Darragh, Victor Hernández Cruz, Will Alexander, and many more. The book can be ordered directly from the publisher for the discounted price of $17/shipping included.

Editor Chris Agee included a handwritten note with v9 n2 of Irish Pages, "This issue is already highly controversial. . . " Why? The focus: "Israel, Islam & the West" with feature content: Gerard McCarthy on the refugee crisis in Greece; An unpublished survivor’s account of Bergen Belsen; “A Trial” by Hubert Butler; Writings on Iran, Bosnia and Islam; Avi Shlaim on “Israel and the Arrogance of Power”; Dervla Murphy’s “Hasbara in Action”; John McHugo on Syria; Chris Agee on “Troubled Belfast”; Ghazels of Hafez; Lara Marlowe on Mahmoud Darwish; New poems on the Middle East by Seán Lysaght, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ciarán O’Rourke & Cathal Ó Searcaigh; and “I am Belfast”, a photographic portfolio by Mark Cousins.

The cover photograph for the Spring 2017 issue of Thema by VHoward fits this issue's theme perfectly: "Take the zucchini and run." And also gave me a jolt of hope for summer's soon arrival!
The Spring 2017 cover photo of Willow Springs is by Polish-born photographer Marta Berens from her ongoing series Suiti - documenting the culture of the people of Alsunga, Latvia.
While the ship in the bottle is the focal point of Justin Burks's image on the Winter 2017 issue of Carve, it was actually the Kit-Cat Clock that drew me in. Burks is a graduate of the Art Institute of Dallas and founder of Birdhouse Branding, a creative agency that helps develop and design brands, websites and illustrations for individuals and organizations.

September 30, 2017 marks the seventh annual global event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots organization that brings poets, artists, musicians, and photographers together to call for environmental, social, and political change, within the framework of peace and sustainability. The local focus is key to this global event as communities around the world raise their voices through concerts, readings, workshops, flash mobs, community picnics, parades and demonstrations that speak to the heart of their specific area of concerns, such as homelessness, ecocide, racism and censorship.

The 100 Thousand Poets for Change website now features a Global Action Calendar open to everyone for posting creative actions planned to take place around the world, as well as the Resistance Poetry Wall, an open call for posting poetry about the recent USA elections. Poets from around the world are invited to post.

100 Thousand Poets for Change wants everyone planning now for their local September events and asks that organizers register their events on the 100 TPC website so your actions can be recognized.

"The Telling Room is a nonprofit writing center in Portland, Maine, dedicated to the idea that children and young adults are natural storytellers." Focusing on writers ages 6 to 18, The Telling Room offers programs at their downtown writing center, engaging local writers, artists, teachers, and community groups in afterschool workshops, writing assistance, fieldtrips, the "Super Famous Writers Series," and publishing.

In her feature article for the Glimmer Train Bulletin #122, fiction writer Kimberly Bunker opens "The Fear of Not Saying Interesting Things" with: "For some reason, this doesn't stop me from talking, but it often stops me from writing." She continues, commenting on both the necessity of work as well as inspiration for writers. "I think it's possible to cultivate a mindset that's receptive to but not obsessive about ideas, and to be methodical about pursuing the ideas that seem worth pursuing—i.e., finding a balance between waiting for lightning to strike, and getting behind the mule." Read the full article here.

Published by NYU Langone Medical Center as part of the Department of Medicine's Division of Medical Humanities, the Spring 2017 issue of Bellevue Literary Review features the winners and runners-up of their 2017 Bellevue Literary Review Prize:

Goldenberg Prize for Fiction
Selected by Ha Jin
Winner: “Do I Look Sick to You? (Notes on How to Make Love to a Cancer Patient)” by C.J. Hribal
Honorable Mention: “And It Is No Joke” by Conor Kelley

Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction
Selected by Ariel Levy
Winner: “Of Mothers and Monkeys: A Case Study” by Caitlin Kuehn
Honorable Mention: “Jacket” by Jennifer Hildebrandt

Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry
Selected by Kazim Ali
Winner: “Poem For A Friend Growing Lighter and Lighter” by Abe Louise Young [pictured]
Honorable Mention: “In the absence of birdsong” by Michaela Coplen