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Magazine Stand :: bioStories – 13.1

bioStories 13.1 2023 cover image

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.

Magazine Stand :: bioStories – June 2023

bioStories literary magazine logo

Publishing nonfiction prose only, bioStories offers readers writing that focuses on the skilled craft of storytelling, with biographies that express the understanding that “real life is messy,” yet acknowledge: “human nature is idiosyncratic and frequently contradictory, and, quite often, when you look close enough, it is downright graceful.” The publication features a weekly essay on its homepage. Recent contributors include Julie Lockhart, Yoon Chung, Cathy Fiorello, Joshua David Laine, Pamela Kaye, Michelle Cacho-Negrete, Sally Carton, and Sydney Lea.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Magazine Stand :: bioStories – October 2022

bioStories online literary magazine logo

Publishing nonfiction prose only, bioStories offers submission guidelines that help writers focus their craft on what the editors are looking for, and express the understanding that “real life is messy,” yet acknowledge: “human nature is idiosyncratic and frequently contradictory, and, quite often, when you look close enough, it is downright graceful.” The publication features a weekly essay on its homepage and prints two issues each year. Recent online contributors include Alisa Vereshchagin, Jane Frances Hacking, Elizabeth Bird, Alden S. Blodget, Joseph O’Day, Mary Ittelson, James Seawel, Liza Wieland, and Rhiannon Koehler.

Magazine Stand :: bioStories – April 2022

As we come out of this pandemic – or learn to live with the endemic – we lament that we may have ‘forgotten’ how to live more communally with others. bioStories is a wonderful way to keep ourselves in tune to the lives of others and how we interact both locally and globally. Publishing nonfiction prose only, bioStories offers submission guidelines that help writers focus their craft on what the editors are looking for, and express the understanding that “real life is messy,” yet acknowledge: “human nature is idiosyncratic and frequently contradictory, and, quite often, when you look close enough, it is downright graceful.” The publication features a weekly essay on its homepage and prints two issues each year. Recent online contributions include Neil Cawley “Speech and Debate in the Time of Covid,“ Al Czarnowsky “Buck,“ Nancy Deyo “Naked Facebook Friday,“ William Keiser “A Postcard from the End,“ Jae Nolan “Better Left Unsaid,“ Kristen Ott Hogan “Give that Dog a Bone,“ Gretchen Roselli “Aunt Aggie, Bobby Kennedy, and My Parents’ Summer Theater,“ Nancy Smith Harris “Ida Ziegler,“ Aminah Wells “The Ballet Barre.“ and Andrew Yim “Grammy’s Secret.“

bioStories – August 2021

biostories

New on bioStories so far this year: Tim Bascom “At Ease,” Emma Berndt “Wisdom from the Alligator Purse,” Deborah Burghardt “Leaving Mum Behind,” Joe Dworetzky “Big League,” Patricia Feeney “Holy Mother,” Karen Foster “Carrying Sam,” J. Malcolm Garcia “The Reporter and the Reporter’s Mother,” and more. See a list of all of 2021’s contributors so far at the bioStories website.

bioStories – Vol. 9 No. 1

The latest issue of bioStories introduces readers to the survivors of wars and the survivors of accidents, transports them to homeless shelters and hospitals, onto urban campuses and within rural farmhouses, and invites them to live briefly alongside occupants of cramped Brooklyn apartments and Southwest desert trailer parks. Work by Steven Beckwith, J. Malcolm Garcia, Jay Bush, Gary Fincke, and more.

Ann S. Epstein Questions What’s in a Name

biostories

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

bioStories invites readers into the daily lives of those around us. Ann S. Epstein’s “My Name Could Be Toby Gardner” explores a topic that follows all of us daily: our names.

Born to a family of immigrants, Epstein begins by breaking down her parents’, grandparents’, sibling’s, and aunt’s name, each of them going by one that was not given to them at birth. Once she makes it to her own name, Epstein considers the ways which we tie identity to the name people call us. But she’s never felt connected to neither her first nor last names.

There is something almost comical about the way Epstein rights about this. The constant back and forth and corrections of the names of the people she’s mentioning in her piece are handled with levity, but she concludes on a more serious tone, wondering if names can be lost if they don’t make their mark on their person when they’re young.

Whether you want to spend some time thinking about what names mean to identity, or you just want to learn about the intricacies of the names of Epstein’s family, this is a quick and interesting read.

About the reviewer: Katy Haas is Assistant Editor at NewPages. Recent poetry can be found in Taco Bell Quarterly, petrichor, and other journals. She regularly blogs at: newpages.com/blog.