I love unassuming journals: those thinner, saddle-stitched endeavors with so few people working behind the scenes, I can count them on one hand. Some border on zine rather than lit mag, and it can be a hard call. With this publication, there is no question that this publication is right up there with much larger-staffed literary endeavors. With full-color throughout – photos, artwork, page design – this “little” publication is a huge feast for the eyes. As plagues fine art reproductions, however, there are some issues with resolution that I wish could be resolved, rather than holding the image at an arm’s length to limit the blur. The written works, poetry and fiction, are not to be held at arm’s length, but brought into close range. Not one piece in here I didn’t like for at least a line or stanza or image or feeling it dragged into me and out of me.

This new upstart journal from my hometown of Seattle has already garnered national attention and deservedly so. Newcomers crowd the pages next to the occasional more well-known names like Lyn Lifshin and Joshua Marie Wilkinson, and the mix of poetry and prose, with interspersed black-and-white art work, is intense and surprising.

Tabloid sized, with its impressive, glossy jacket and hard cover, Tampa Review always feels like an extravagant gift (especially considering its unbelievably reasonable price).

I had a sense of déjà vu while reading The Tampa Review. I held the large slim 7x11 hardcover and remembered beautifully illustrated fairy tales books from my childhood. Although The Tampa Review is not filled with whimsical tales, the cover artwork by Florida artist James Rosenquist along with the black and white photos in the journal creates a book of beauty.

This is my favorite issue of this handsome annual yet. It’s smartly edited, with a collection of pieces that seem very much to belong together and to belong in exactly the order in which they appear. The issue opens with a silver print by Jerry N. Uelsmann of a sky inside a hand holding up both a house and a naked shadowy figure looking to one side, but approaching the house. On the facing page, Kathleen Spivack’s poem, “Seeming to Happen,” concludes “I, who thought myself ‘indecisive,’ find indeed I was only waiting: / waiting for you, for me, for a path, for a way to walk into this / painting.”

Tampa Review is a literary magazine published with glossy pages and hardcover binding. Elegant, but not exclusive, connections to the Tampa Bay region in Florida emerge. You can hear the brackish river boiling up in the valley in some of the poems, and taste the mist of the Gulf of Mexico estuary in some of the raw fiction. As for presentation, as the old joke goes about Playboy, “I read it for the articles,” but found the art to reflect a certain careful sensibility, an allegiance to the editorial insofar that there was a basic realism bearing with it the promise of extended interpretation.

A beautiful hardcover issue, the 50th Anniversary Issue of Tampa Review is rich with colorful images and powerful contemporary writing. Though there is no set theme, each piece contains strong yearning from the characters or figures, bringing the reader close to intimate thoughts.

Tampa Review does not look like a literary magazine. The size and shape of a children’s storybook, this hardcover journal elicits the same expectation of entertainment – some pictures, stories, perhaps a lesson or two. There are plenty of pictures, in all types of media. Charlee Brodsky photographs calves and feet, and Jim Daniels describes them in poetry in a series of four connected works. Daniels opens “Glow” with the memorable lines, “The scarred knees of the world / imagine their prayers might be / forgiven.”

A glance at the Tampa Review’s website reveals that it is published in hardback, and that it seeks to combine various arts to carry on the “tradition of illuminated manuscripts.” This edition of TR’s “gallery space in print,” offers journalistic photos by Peter Andrew Bosch and David Swanson to illuminate J. Malcolm Garcia’s “Encountering Afghanistan.” An image of Hanneke Beaumont’s bronze sculpture of a runner kneeling fits well with Mark Baumgartner’s story “Some Miles Back.”

After only seconds on the site, what immediately drew me in was the scrolling images of art by Trent Manning—who works with mixed media and recycled materials—and Jon Rodriguez. In an interview with Rodriguez, the Tampa Review Online asks about the inspiration behind his “seemingly tragic” characters, to which he replies “Each character has their own distinct traits that reflect different aspects that mirror where I’m currently at in life. Some are hopeful and some are tragic. These characters act as a way to share a deep truth about myself, in hopes of helping people see a truth in them.” And this is certainly true for writers as well as we pick up on our own lives and emotions to inspire our work.

I’m the type of girl who crushes on poets, hard. If Robert Frost was still kicking, I’d be tripping through his shrubbery as we speak. So I was pretty excited to open the Fall 2011 issue of Tar River Poetry (TRP) and see Sherman Alexie hanging out in the contents. Yes, please, I thought. Little did I know I’d close this magazine with a handful of new love interests. Yup, I’m that girl.

The Fall 2016 issue of Tar River Poetry is filled with the work of experienced poets; each piece reveals an attention to form and function in a linguistic mélange of technique containing a bounty of literary treasures. The issue is one to keep by the bedside for easy access to multiple reads.

I don’t read literary journals for the reviews they publish, and I’m a little surprised to find myself mentioning them here—in a review. But I have to say that the three reviews in Tar River Poetry are themselves as compelling as the poetry in this small volume. Richard Simpson, Susan Elizabeth Howe and Thomas Reiter present careful, academic discussions of three new poetry volumes, discussions that presume a well-educated but not necessarily scholarly audience. Informative and never pompous, they are a pleasure to read.

Something about a Southern poetry journal, especially one with cream-colored pages and chapbook binding, makes the day pass by slowly. Tar River Poetry is never morbid, never too light, often ironic, often chatty like a friend sitting on the porch during a barbecue. I love, for example, the assonance of William Trowbridge’s “Foolish Tears”: “Tonight, Fool’s sobs / blort through the dark as dog’s bark and big rigs / blast across the overpass.”

If you’re a poetry reader, you’ll recognize many names here (John Balaban, Nicholas Samaras, Sydney Lea, Gloria Vando) and be pleased to see their new work. And you’ll be pleased, too, with the quality of the work presented by poets whose names you may not necessarily recognize (Shannon Ward, Patrick Hicks, Caleb Beissert) and then most especially with the fine reviews by Phebe Davidson, Peter Makuck, and Richard Simpson.

Tar River Poetry, published by East Carolina University, has featured work of established and emerging poets since 1978. This issue follows tradition and includes a substantial number of engaging poems. These predominantly brief, free verse poems are intellectually challenging yet accessible to a wide variety of readers. While these pieces vary in subject and stylistic mode, imagery remains strong throughout the collection. The best poems convey striking images, the kind that stay with a reader long after the last page of the journal is turned.

This new saddle-stitched journal of poetry and art out of Tennessee gives a forum for newer voices, with a lyric bent. I liked the ekphrastic poem “Shark Infested Waters” by Gayle Elen Harvey (about a show by Damien Hirst), as well as P.J. Taylor’s “The Mice and The Lemon Tree.” An excerpt of Taylor’s poem:

This is a tiny little journal, literally, despite its large ambitions—“this journal is designed as an opportunity to bask in the general shiftiness of translation…serves as a home to foreign poetry, as a tool for developing new work, and as an experiment in translation,” the editors tell us—Telephone fits snugly in one palm. This inaugural issue features the work of Berlin poet Uljana Wolf whose original five poems serve as a “jumping-off point” for more than a dozen poets writing in English, including Mary Jo Bang, Matthea Harvey, Robert Fitterman, Erin Moure, and Craig Santos Perez, among others.

Temenos, the journal of Central Michigan University, is a Greek word that “refers both to the ancient Greek concept of sacred space and the Jungian ‘safe spot’ where one may bring the unconscious into the light of consciousness.” The editors say that their mission is to “bring to light works that are engaging, memorable, and fearless.”

Editors Alexandra van de Kamp (U.S.) and Alberto Domínguez  (Spain), two of five co-editors between Madrid and New York, tell us this bilingual journal "attempts to demarcate an open, lyrical territory in which surprising relationships and uncanny connections may occur among different worlds and points of views." The work here does, indeed, reach beyond the mere distance between Manhattan and Madrid, offering an eclectic mix that is surprising and pleasing to find between one set of covers, from José  Saramago's speech to the World Social Forum in Brazil in 2002 "From Justice to Democracy by Way of Our Bells,” to Sarah Kennedy's quiet, painterly poem "Morning, with Tea.”

I wish there were more "international journals" and am pleased to see that this one has survived another year to bring us a fresh new issue. An eclectic and generous editorial vision brings together spectacular photographs of Palenque on the Atlantic coast of Colombia by Oscar Frasser with a respectful view of the "precarious and disadvantageous conditions" of the region, a previously unpublished interview with Paul Bowles (who died in 1999) conducted by Ramon Singh, a journalist, fiction writer, and teacher of American literature who currently lives in Greece, elegant, powerful drawings of the human form by award-winning artist Jeffrey Barrera of Madrid, as well as poems, prose poems, stories, a scholarly essay, a political manifesto, and other offerings in the "galería del arte."

Terrain.org exists at the meeting place of natural and manmade, an online magazine on human nature and our place within the natural the world. Work is added to the website on a rolling basis, so there is always a chance for readers to encounter something new upon each visit. So far, this month provides new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for exploration, as well as a guest editorial: “Letter to America” by Barbara Hurd.

Thema, the literary journal that boasts “many plots/one premise,” stepped into the kitchen for this edition. Editor Virginia Howard, drawing on memories of her time at a New Orleans bed and breakfast, called for short stories, poems, and artwork “varied as a recipe collection in a cookbook . . . concocted from a wide variety of ingredients for the theme ‘In Kay’s Kitchen’.” The result is a delightful compilation of five illustrations, eight poems, and eleven stories that transport readers into the various interpretations of Kay’s kitchen.

One of the many joys of my high school creative writing class was anticipating the daily writing prompt. Our teacher would surprise us every day with a unique topic to write about for five to ten minutes. The excitement and challenge of responding to these daily writing prompts showed me how skillful writers can take any theme and craft it into a well-written essay or poem. If you also know and appreciate the joy of exercising creative writing muscles, then you would enjoy reading THEMA, the theme-related journal. Every issue of THEMA has a distinct theme, which, according to their website, serves three goals: “One is to provide a stimulating forum for established and emerging literary and visual artists. The second is to serve as source material and inspiration for teachers of creative writing. The third is to provide readers with a unique and entertaining collection of stories, poems, art and photography.” The theme of the autumn 2016 issue is “The Neat Lady and the Colonel’s Overalls,” which was inspired by the poetry editor’s visit to a shopping mall. Talented writers answered the call to this quirky theme and present an offering of exciting short fiction and poetry.

The cool thing about THEMA is that prompt thing. Each issue of this cleverly-conceived magazine offers one premise (the prompt) and solicits whatever plots, poems, images and issues writers can come up with from that opening. Now, I don’t mean the opening or beginning of the story. I mean that opening into the imagination, that one key into story or wordplay. THEMA's threefold goal is: “to provide a stimulating forum for established and emerging literary artists […] to serve as source material and inspiration for teachers of creative writing [ . . . ] [and] to provide readers with a unique and entertaining collection of stories and poems.” The theme for the summer issue was “About two miles down the road.” What would you come up with for that?

This issue of Thin Air opens with a hilarious poem about fire, which, by rights, shouldn’t be funny at all. But Matthew J Spireng’s poem “In Case of Fire” will have you smiling by its end. Spireng writes,

Think. Think. Think. A bold title, Think Journal’s very name is a promise to its readers. As Editor Christine Yurick says, “I am drawn to work where something happens, something more than a fleeting moment of insignificance, something with depth and importance.” Something that makes you think. It’s a promise that is fulfilled. There’s no lack of action or rumination in this journal, which is certainly something worth applauding. Think Journal publishes pretty much any genre by emerging and established writers. Its writers ask you to think about issues that are both personal and universal – love, desire, grief, etc.

This issue opens with a Q & A of poet Juliana Baggott, who has several poems featured here. Her responses are quick-witted and funny, quite, I imagine, as you’d expect a poet’s to be. When asked why she doesn’t write formal poetry, she responds, “I mistake quatrain for Coltrane, terza rima for tiramisu,” and, while she agrees that “there is desperation in numbers, an attempt to keep account like naming babies in an orphanage hospital,” she admits that she will “forever 1-2-3 a waltz.” Witty indeed, and her poems - beautifully imagined and written. For example, in “The Stolen Poem: My Brother Poem after Levine’s ‘What Work Is’,” she writes, “He won’t admit to rain. Only / A break in the sun to wait out / My brother wait for it to unwind / amid the no-no of children, jazz, Scotch.”

Winners of the Third Coast fiction and poetry contests are announced on the first pages of this issue, with a justification for their choices written by judges Stuart Dybek (fiction) and David Rivard (poetry). The gambler in me skipped those pages and went right into the content of the magazine hoping to suss out the winning pieces. Would anything distinguish their work from regular submissions, except they got publication and a thousand bucks for their effort? Maybe it was the frame of mind in which I read, or the preference of the editors, but there seems an element of risk, physical and spiritual, running throughout the writing in this issue.

Third Coast, “founded in 1995 by graduate students of the Western Michigan University English department,” invites its readers into personal narratives, imaginative lyricism, and in-depth interviews for its Fall 2011 publication. Editor Emily J. Stinson compiled a collection of creative poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, an interview, and reviews that resulted in an experience that takes us through the fire of creative minds. Its features fiction first-place winner, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, first-place poetry winner, Jennifer Perrine, and thirty-two other polished writers who leave the reader feeling closer to understanding the depth, cruelty, and beauty of human nature.

Consistently one of the best, cleanest-looking, most affordable and most interesting literary magazines, Third Coast seems incapable of ever making a bad move. If you go to it for your fix of Bob Hicok, for example, you might get distracted by a story by Kieth Banner - lines like “I love her like you might love a stubbed toe if the rest of your body was numb.”

Interviewers Amanda Rachelle Warren and Roy Seeger ask terrific questions of Mary Ruefle whose terrific answers include this characterization of a writer's work: "…an artist…is on a very personal journey in an extremely un-personal world." Fortunately, the sixteen poets, seven fiction writers, and three creative nonfiction contributors represented here know how to link the personal and "un-personal" to bring us work that is both fresh (as in honest and authentic) and refreshingly free of gimmicks and empty rhetorical devices.

One of the steadiest journals of the past few years, Third Coast offers another set of quality poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction. If the consistency of Third Coast has become a bit expected, the work inside is anything but. One of Third Coast’s preoccupations, the natural world, is always viewed through an unfamiliar lens.

A quick glance at the Contributors Notes of the Spring 2009 issue of Third Coast reads like a promotional pamphlet for the country’s top MFA programs. Coast to coast, nearly every school is represented, the teachers of writing, the recent graduates, those still pursuing the elusive MFA or PhD. Yet, despite the ongoing rant that too many MFA graduates will inevitably result in the generic poem or prose, this issue serves as a glorious contradiction. Occupying nearly 200 pages of text, a total of 28 poets writing 36 poems, 15 prose writers writing 6 short stories, 2 creative non-fiction pieces, 1 play, and several reviews for a recommended books section, I applaud the editors of Third Coast for their wonderful diversity of taste, for their willingness to publish both the well established and the newly emerging, for their particular caliber of excellence. This issue provides a little something for everyone in pursuit of a satisfying read.

This Magazine is a delightfully eclectic little glossy out of Toronto that has been in publication since the 1960's. The magazine has recently seen some format changes, as it attempts, in the words of editor Patricia D’Souza, to define what it “means to be a magazine of alternative culture in a time when alternative culture has become a mainstream concept.” This will no longer run single-theme centered issues, choosing instead to “adop[t] a storytelling approach that is more responsive to current events.” 

If you’re a literary traditionalist or an anal grammar/perfect-proof reader, leave. You’ll hate this publication. For the remaining (more forgiving) folks, let’s talk. The first section is a bit rough. I swear someone lost pages to the Manil Suri (“Death of Vishnu”) interview. But the “Letters to the Editor” start the engine purring. Look at these beginning sentences: "I love the rain / As a schoolgirl, I read the story of Hero and Leander for the first time in Arabic / I believe that human beings everywhere share similar joys and sorrows."

Joan Fox’s Editor’s Note, entitled “Variety and Vision,” states that this inaugural issue “features poems of survival, defiance and hope; images of our Western landscape; and, works offering a world of beings—mountain lions, coyotes, doves, dragonflies, cockroaches, fleas, cats, dogs, pelicans, humans, machines, sunlight.” Indeed, Three Coyotes highlights the beauty of the natural world, whether it is through the medium of prose, poetry, or photography.

Anne Carson, Gary Shhteyngart, and Mark Doty, all in this issue! There's also a wonderful story ("The Red Fox Fur Coat") by Teolinda Gersao, translated from the Portuguese by Margert Jull Costa, who also contributes a translation of an essay on Faulkner by Javier Marías, outstanding book essays by P.N. Furbank (on Geoffrey Hill's Style and Faith) and Rachel Cohen (on a new edition of Rilke's Letters On Cézanne), and C.K. Williams on Lowell's Collected Poems, comparing poets to composers: "…that there are elements in the poems that I don't care for, or even have to forgive, is incidental to the elemental experience of being taken again by Lowell's singularly gratifying music." The prose is accompanied by marvelous poems.

This issue continues the quarterly magazine’s tradition of intelligent, accessible writing over a wide range of topics in the arts and literature, in addition to high-quality poetry and fiction. As a previous NewPages reviewer commented, “It’s a bit like the New Yorker, only without the self-importance and the umlauts.”

The contributors of this highly-regarded publication hail from all over the world, but the sensibility is very much of its place of origin, Berkeley, CA. The sense of place and identity are pervasive.

There is a certain perversity in newspaper-bound journals—after all, how can something as valuable as literature exist in such a vulnerable state, resembling Sunday-edition inserts destined, unread, for the recycling bin. Accustomed to the pretty, diminutive books that populate the same category, I was immediately disarmed by the lackluster appearance of The Threepenny Review. 

The contributors list for The Threepenny Review reads like a Who’s Who of the literary world, with contributions in this issue alone by A.L. Kennedy, W.S. DiPiero, Jill McDonough and Anne Carson. The poetry and fiction featured in this issue impress with beauty and simplicity—you won’t need to Google a thing.

This thirtieth anniversary issue of the magazine (noted only on the cover, no grand recapping of great accomplishments or even an editorial remark on the milestone publication) is like every issue that has preceded it and, let us hope, every one that will follow – intelligent. I count on the The Threepenny Review to reassure me that there are intelligent voices, thoughtful and critical minds, broadly educated thinkers, careful writers, and intellectually viable perspectives producing consistently high quality work that doesn’t seek to grab attention, shore up trends, or even to set them.

With three issues a year, publishing fiction, Thrice Fiction is up-front and in-your-face, and not just when it comes to what genre it publishes and when. Its content is just as in-your-face with larger-than-life writing, and with full-color art donning almost every page.

Unlike so many other literary magazines, Thrice Fiction is, in itself, a work of art. It captures the spirit of each piece of fiction within its pages through original artwork and bends the concept of “short fiction” to encompass truly creative works that defy traditional short story formats. Self-identified as an alternative zine, each page tells a unique story from a unique voice, illustrated with unique art.

Editor RW Spryszak begins this issue of Thrice Fiction by addressing the misconceptions some have with regard to “micro fiction.” Spryszak rejects the notion that flash fiction is “experimental” and has a very good point. “Experimental” implies that a piece isn’t fully formed “or that the writer doesn’t know what they’re trying to get at . . . by the time something is ready for public viewing the experiment should be over.” The writers whose work is represented in Thrice Fiction make use of the toolboxes of both poets and short story writers to create stories that are as emotionally potent as they are brief.

Ignore the over-sized, cursive drop caps that begin each piece (inelegantly in their aggressive elegance) and concentrate on the larger-than-life sized prose in this issue. When I think of "spiritual literature," I think first of poetry, and there certainly are some memorable poems here (most notably work by Rachel Hadas, Kathleen Graber, and ellen), but it's the prose that, surprisingly and delightfully, commands my attention above all. 

A young journal — this is just the third issue — Tiferet has the solidity and self-assuredness of a more seasoned publication and its approach to “spiritual literature” is expansive. Take, for example, this poem by Helen Marie Casey, “Loaves and Pears”:

If there’s been a push as of late to break the glass ceiling of female graphic artists, then little magazines stand in the vanguard: this summer Marjane Satrapi was interviewed in The Believer; a little later, A Public Space came out with an excerpt from Lauren Redniss’s Century Girl. Now comes Tin House’s graphic issue, which goes further than either publication, featuring articles with Satrapi and earthy icon Lynda Barry (whose curiously scatological and entirely dualistic rumination on the nature of mental imagery graces the cover), and, later, a vignette on the dearth of female graphic artists. An interview with Satrapi follows, wherein this “queen” of graphic novels discusses how she reworked the flurry of misconceptions surrounding her Iranian heritage into the intelligent, darkly humorous Persepolis, now the subject of a movie deal.

“If you’re not seized by dread you’re not paying attention.” “We are now recognizing each other’s humanity, are connected and transformed by each other’s experiences. Or so we hope.” Do these statements contradict each other? Yes! Do they represent the realistic dichotomy of American life in the current moment? Yes! Do they summarize the dual themes of “dread” and “hope” that organize the work in this issue of Tin House? Yes!

For their latest issue, the editors of Tin House have gone tribal, calling on some of their “favorite storytellers and poets” to help explain “what life is like in our contemporary tribes.” In creating their “Tribes” issue, they’ve assembled a trenchant and soulful collection of poetry, fiction, and essays that unsettle as they entertain, exploring the consolation and alienation of belonging or wanting to belong. Poetry from Tony Hoagland and Cate Marvin, fiction from Jess Walter and Julia Elliott, essays from Roxanne Gay and Molly Ringwald, as well as the work of many other well-known writers, all share communal space in this lively gathering of the literary tribes.

Volume 19 Number 1 is the “True Crime” issue of Tin House, designed, according to Editor Rob Spillman, “as a way to engage our country’s voyeuristic obsession with rogues and outlaws.” While vintage scraps of American morbidity do feature in this issue—the Starkweather murders, the Kansas village made famous by Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood—social justice and the criminal state share equal billing. In the latter poems and stories, black and brown lives are pulled apart by oppressive forces emboldened by a complicit public. The gateway to the issue, Sean Lewis’s portrait of record producer Phil Spector, is dark and almost whimsical, a perfect point of entry. Lewis replaces Spector’s head with tangled tape, evoking a wig worn at his trial, as well as the “confused mind” that would lead him to murder actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. 

Tin House is celebrating its tenth anniversary, but it is the reader who receives the birthday present. The editors celebrate “art that provokes intense emotion,” presenting both psychologically potent stories and poems and interviews that invite the reader to reflect upon their own understanding of art. The top-notch graphic design, with full-bleed photograph pages before each story, makes the stories that much more inviting.

The summer issue of Tin House: cue an essay on “miserablism”—not in music, as Simon Reynolds once used to describe Morrissey and other gloomy Manchester bands but in fiction, as Gerald Howard employs in an essay on the “Merritt Parkway Novel.” More on that later, but let that brief introduction to this issue suffice to say that this isn’t exactly light-hearted beach reading. Who wants that anyways? The editor’s note says, “Consider this summer reading as providing a few grains of sand in your suntan lotion, a little bit of grit to remind of you the depth and breadth of the human condition.” So, let this Tin House do just that—give a dark, realistic, take on summer reading.

Tin House continues their run of excellence with this superb issue – one of their finest. The hot-button piece is Steve Almond’s collection of responses to the hate mail he received as a result of quitting his position at Boston College in protest of Condoleezza Rice being named commencement speaker. The e-mails are shocking, and Almond’s responses vary from whip-smart to insightful to hilarious to scathing all the way to heartbreaking. Almond’s concern for Tom and Katie’s baby in the face of being compared – no, equated – to bin Laden and Zarqawi is touching.

The Tishman Review is a literary magazine chock-full of the literary goods. I mean, the thing is stacked with a stunning array of quality writing.

Dubbed “The Transitional Issue,” this first issue of Toad Suck Review, based at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), follows the demise of the Exquisite Corpse Annual, which ended when founder and editor Andrei Codrescu retired. The team at the helm aims to carry on the Corpse's “experimental sense of humor and international enquiries” while at the same time staying true to its central Arkansan roots. With gaping shoes to fill, the Toad Suck crew delivers an impressive first shot of literary whiskey.

Toad Suck Review has exploded with success since its debut issue in 2011. Volume 2 is titled “Obey” and follows well on the heels of a remarkable first issue. The table of contents is enough to lure you into a very different and fun structure. Included are: Nonfixion, High-Octane Poetix, Artist-in-Residence Features, Fixion, Translation, Eco-Edge, Critical Intel, and much more. This magazine features not only current writers, but honors great past writers as well. Everything is woven into an incredibly enjoyable read that leaves breadcrumbs along the way to find more where that came from.

The first issue of TQ Review defines itself as “a journal of trans and queer voices.” These are authors speaking from their experiences and divulging their fears. The authors don’t share victim stories or stories of triumph, but everything in between. These are the stories of people within the trans and queer communities laying bare their fears and vulnerabilities.

The editor of the first issue of Trachodon, named after a dinosaur that never existed, writes in his editor’s note, “I want TRACHODON the magazine…to be this weird, sort of impossible thing. Something that’s up for debate because it’s always leaning a little toward the unreasonable. And, maybe, to be something that’s never quite finished.”

Only on their second issue, the editors of Treehouse are off to a great start. Called an “online magazine for short, good writing,” this issue of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry does justice to its tagline.

Guest editor Kimiko Hahn has compiled a collection of poems and stories based on research, paintings, photographs, and other source materials, several essays about writers' relationships to influences and original sources, and lengthy contributors' notes describing the writers’ processes and approaches. Hahn provides an introduction to the issue in a poetry/theory style, "Notes Re: Trawl/Troll," and includes two poems of her own in the issue. As a reader who is partial to research-based writing, I was especially interested in this issue, but I am confident that readers with no particular connection to this type of work will find a great deal to appreciate here.

The fiction in TriQuarterly ranks among the best today, but whereas many journals contain excellent fiction of one variety, TriQuarterly’s strength lies in its diversity. Jonathan David’s hilarious “The Sub” tells the story of a horrendous substitute teacher through (mostly) anonymous letters from the students themselves. “The Sub” is (intentionally?) reminiscent of Donald Barthelme’s classic “The School.” The latter’s strength lies in how the stakes are raised, the former’s is in the variety of voices, the smart and the not-so, the misbehaving and the apple polishing, the liars and the too-honest.

TriQuarterly’s Summer/Fall 2017 issue is rife with writing of a high literary caliber. The pieces in this issue are all exciting in their own way, and I found myself quite taken by a number of them. Many of the fiction pieces in this issue are stellar. Though the stories range in style from straight-up literary realism to magical realism with a touch of the surreal, the one thing they share in common is a strong emotional core.

Each issue of True Story shines a spotlight on one nonfiction piece by one writer. As one of my favorite print magazines, I always look forward to finding out which each new issue's story will be. This year's issues have, among other stories, featured a neighborhood coming together to search for a missing woman with dementia ("Search Party" by Stewart Lawrence Sinclair), and a camp counselor reflecting on his treatment of a particular camper in the wake of a sex abuse scandal involving the camp where he was once a camper himself (“Unmolested” by Michael Lowenthal). Readers never really know what to expect with each issue, part of the beauty of the little, pocket-sized magazine.

Every month, it's a struggle not to pick up True Story and immediately begin reading as soon as the new issue arrives at the office. As a fan of both the little, single-author nonfiction magazine and true crime, Issue 7 reeled me in and refused to let go. I had to read the first few pages at my desk. While not for the faint of heart, Andrew Maynard deftly balances fact and feeling in this issue’s timely story "Take Your Son to Work Day.”

If I’m being honest, what drew me in to the first issue of True Story, brought to you by the editors of Creative Nonfiction and In Fact Books, is that the inaugural story, “Fruitland” by Steven Kurutz, sounded intriguing, mysterious, and—well—like a fiction story I’d like to read. Two brothers, Donnie and Joe Emerson, recorded an album together in the late 70s. While a flop at the time, it was rediscovered by chance in 2008, catapulting them into belated fame and inevitably stirring up ghosts. As a true story, “Fruitland” ends up offering more to readers than a fictionalized “inspired by” story ever could.

The Tusculum Review is two hundred pages of a bit of everything – all wrapped up in a glossy purple cover. Ordinary? Not even close. “New voices” – that’s what the editors tell us it is about. It contains fresh, exciting material – like a one-act play with only one character living out a “wide awake nightmare,” titled “Gone” by Roy Sorrels. It’s ingenious, compact, and a delightful mini-nightmare to read.

The Tusculum Review plunges into an odyssey of self-reflection, confession, and recollection. The review calls itself, "an annual venue for new voices," and each voice within its pages is entirely unique from its counterparts. The sampling highlights a fusion of character voices within the short stories, drama, poetry, and illustrations; each piece retains a beautifully rendered resonance to its own statement.

Celebrations, gatherings, affairs, factions, feasts, salons, unions, orgies, sects, partners, leagues, cabals, defendants, accomplices, holidays, conspirators, partakers — the definition of "parties" for this tenth volume of the journal. TWO LINES is an engrossing theme-based journal of poems in translation, published by the Center for Art in Translation in San Francisco. It's beautifully and cleverly done and, to its credit, includes only work published for the first time in English in North America. The historical framework is as expansive as the geographical scope, with poems from ancient times to the current moment. Poets include a few writers who may be well known to readers in the U.S. and many who certainly remain unknown here were it not for TWO LINES. All of the poems appear in their original language (Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, French from France and Senegal,  Finnish, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Provençal, Spanish from several Latin American countries, Uzbek, and more) and in translation, preceded by a bio of the poet and a short commentary from the translator about the process of creating the translation. Brief contributors' notes at the back of the journal provide the translators' bios.

This captivating journal presents essays, poems and stories in their original language side by side with their English translations and notes from the translators.

Typoetic.us is a play on words, on the url and its own name (Typoeticus: ending like so many Greek names with the -ticus), and just a downright playful poetry journal. But don’t take playful to mean light and frivolous; rather, playful in the way that us literarians appreciate. The featured writers skillfully play with language, sound, emotion, and experience, and as readers, we are invited along as playmates. With the variety of styles the editorial sense includes, no one is left out.