Frontier Poetry’s New Voices Fellowship is for uplifting and supporting “emerging poets from traditionally marginalized communities.” Congratulations to the newly announced Fellow for 2020: Dujie Tahat.
Tahat will receive a $500 grant, editorial guidance, the opportunity to read for Frontier, and publication of his work.
You can learn more about Tahat, listen to his podcast, and read recent work linked from the Frontier Poetry website.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Three poems by Laurinda Lind can be found in Issue 29 of High Desert Journal: “When I Lived in Soda Springs, Idaho & I Had a Belly at the Bar,” “When I Lived in Soda Springs, Idaho & the Cashier at the Convenience Store Was Friendly to Me,” and “When I Lived in Soda Springs, Idaho & I Had Not Yet Killed a Black Widow Spider.”
This series of prose poems is strong in its storytelling. They read quickly with sentences that run on as if the speaker can’t wait to get the words out. The speaker is not the only person in these pieces. They all include other people the speaker interacts with, a cast of characters that Lind brings to life for us: her neighbor “who later stole several hundred dollars from me & nearly killed my cat,” the “old guy” who “wanted to buy us beers,” the friendly cashier who was “short & pretty” with “huge green eyes” and later robbed the store she worked at, and the man who calls her and harasses her over the phone.
There’s an edge to the writing, a take-no-nonsense attitude in every piece. The speaker is a woman who is surviving against the odds in this strange, unfamiliar place with people and animals who make living there difficult. Lind fleshes out a speaker who readers can root for.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
I’m a fan of reading and making blackout poetry, and the Spring 2020 issue of Willow Springs offers one piece of blackout by Jackson Burgess. What makes this a little more unique than other pieces of blackout I’ve read in the past is that Burgess blacks out his own poem.
On one page, readers can find a prose poem called “Medicine,” which details an almost nightmarish account of medical themes exploring a “lifetime trying to learn what another body needs.” On the next page, the prose poem is blacked out leaving only twelve words from the original piece. Dark and creative, I enjoyed the construction and deconstruction of Burgess’s work.
The winners of the 24th Annual Poet Hunt can be found in the Winter 2020 issue of The MacGuffin. Judge Richard Tillinghast introduces his selections and gives some insight about the winner and the two runners-up in the issue.
Winner
“The Sketchbooks of Hiroshige” by Jane Craven
Honorable Mentions
“Sonnet from the German Front, 1944” by Jill Reid
“Aergia in the Overworld” by John Blair
The 2020 contest opened for submissions today and will run until June 15. Winners receive publication and a $500 grand prize. Visit The MacGuffin’s website to learn more.
Registration Deadline: July 16, 2020
Event Dates: July 17 – July 31, 2020; Washington University in St. Louis
The Summer Writers Institute is excited to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2020. We are known for bringing together adult writers of all levels to work with published authors and exceptional teachers in a supportive, non-competitive format. Our intensive two-week program features workshops in fiction, micro-fiction, poetry, and personal narrative. Whether this is your first foray into the writing life or the next step in honing your craft, we look forward to welcoming you in St. Louis this summer! summerschool.wustl.edu/summer-writers-institute
“The Everyday” issue celebrates Ruminate‘s focus on finding the sacred within everyday moments and routines. This issue features work from our 2019 Broadside winner Meredith Stricker, as well as the winning pieces from our 2020 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize written by Jasmine V. Bailey, Kelly J. Beard, and Atash Yaghmaian chosen by judge Brianna Van Dyke. Also in this issue: Erin Malone, Chelsea Dingman, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Nick Yingling, Alyse Bensel, Daniel Seth Kraus, Andrew Huot, Stacy Trautwein Burns, and more.
In this issue of New England Review you’ll find fiction by Maud Casey, David Allan Cates, Nandini Dhar, Elin Hawkinson, Christine Sneed, and Lindsay Starck; poetry by Su Cho, John Freeman, Rodney Gomez, Zach Linge, Vandana Khanna, Joanna Klink, Philip Metres,, Maura Stanton, Emily Jungmin Yoon, and more; nonfiction by Kazim Ali, Jennifer Chang, Ching-In Chen, Julia Cohen, and others; and Max Frisch in translations, translated by Linda Frazee Baker. Plus cover art by Brian Nash.
Event Location: Online Only
Application Deadline: April 30, 2020
Applications are now open for the “Erasure Poetry” seminar! This seminar is offered completely online. The “Erasure Seminar” is perfect for poets looking to explore the history and techniques behind erasure poetry. Deadline to join is April 30th, and all students will be admitted on a first come, first served basis.
Check out the new issue of Gargoyle. Contributors include: Laura Arciniega, Paula Bonnell, Sarah Browning, Michael Casey, Grace Cavalieri, Patrick Chapman, Bonnie Chau, Katie Cortese, celeste doaks, Gabriel Don, Cornelius Eady, Blair Ewing, Abby Frucht, Patricia Henley, George Kalamaras, Louise Wareham Leonard, Trish MacEnulty, Franetta McMillian, Tony Medina, Nancy Mercado, Susan Neville, A.L. Nielsen, Josip Novakovich, James J. Patterson, bart plantenga, Bern Porter, Doug Rice, Jane Satterfield, Davis Schneiderman, Claire Scott, Gregg Shapiro, Rose Solari, Maya Sonenberg, Marilyn Stablein, Susan Tepper, Michael Waters, and many more.
Discover a new issue of The MacGuffin. Volume 36 Number 1 spotlights the winners of our 2019 Poet Hunt Contest as selected by guest judge Richard Tillinghast. Jane Craven’s first place “The Sketchbooks of Hiroshige,” begins on p. 74, followed by our two honorable mention poets, Jill Reid and John Blair. This issue’s prose selections include Lucy Mihajlich’s “When I Infiltrated IKEA, They Greeted Me at the Door” and Teresa Milbrodt’s “Playing Krampus.” Featured artist Alison Devine graces the book’s inside and outside with a stroll through the Hamilton, Ontario countryside.
The Spring 2020 issue of Black Warrior Review is out. In this issue: Aliza Ali Khan, Sébastien Bernard, Agata Izabela Brewer, Naomi Day, Meg E. Griffitts, Katherine Indermaur, Sara Kachelman, Jasmine Khaliq, Jessica Lanay, M.L. Martin, Cherise Morris, Mónica Ramón Ríos (translated by Robin Myers), Monica Rico, Angie Sijun Lou, Molli Spalter, Qianqian Ye, and more. Chapbook by Seo-Young Chu. Cover art by Dominic Chambers.
Find the newest issue of The Adroit Journal is out. Readers can check out poetry by Bryan Byrdlong, Steven Duong, Garous Abdolmalekian, Emily Lee Luan, John Freeman, Erin Adair-Hodges, Peter Streckfus, Ae Hee Lee, Matthew Gellman, Sara Elkamel, Seth Simons, Imani Davis, Kim Addonizio, Sahar Romani, Zach Linge, Matthew Rohrer, Joanna Klink, and more; prose by Cathy Ulrich, K-Ming Chang, Connor Oswald, and others; plus conversations with Natalie Diaz, Matthew Rohrer, Brian Teare, Deb Olin Unferth, and Matthew Zapruder.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Each issue of THEMA invites writers to explore a given theme. The Spring 2020 issue’s theme is “Six Before Eighty,” which Editor Virginia Howard explains in her Editor’s Note, gave writers a run for their money. It “tended to puzzle more authors than usual.”
Despite the challenge, sixteen on-theme pieces made it into the issue. H.B. Salzer in “Her Number Six” writes of a woman’s bucket list—six things to do before she turns eighty. James “Jack” Penha in “Eulogy for My Elder Brother,” writes fondly of his brother who passed away at age seventy-four—six years before turning eighty. In “Written in Gold,” Larry Lefkowitz’s characters try their own hand at translating the theme finding it in a Mayan inscription in a temple. But my two favorite pieces in the issue each interpret the theme as different roads.
In “Mantra” by Lisa Timpf, the numbers are a reminder for a man’s fading memory. Regional Road 6 comes before Sideroad 80 and then he’s home. Readers can feel the anxiety in the piece as he repeats his mantra, trying to get home while admitting he “hasn’t told his wife / how much has slipped away.” But his mantra always gets him back home.
Cherie Bowers’s “Off-Ramp” is a short poem conjuring up Exit 6 as it merges onto 1-80. Here, a memorial with “fading words” reads, “We love you, Jason.” “To see it clearly,” the speaker says, “you must slow down,” a reminder for readers it’s necessary to slow down to truly see everything around us and to give thought to these fading signs we see beside the road.
I’m sure it was a lot of run writing for this issue of THEMA, and it was a lot of run reading what everyone was able to come up with.
Guest Post by Robert Bensen
We can go to Margot Farrington’s The Blue Canoe of Longing (as Seamus Heaney wrote of poetry at large) “to be forwarded within ourselves,” to conceive “a new scope for our mind’s activity”—and that of the heart, as Farrington’s art draws desire out to longing, from the familiar to the exotic, lowly to lofty, in Catskill country poems and Brooklyn city poems.
The pleasure begins in effortless, exacting metaphors that create (for instance) space for the “orchestral silence” of heat lightning, the “rogue shapes” of clouds, the “buffed dominos” of Holstein cows,” the “starlight / beading like solder on a running brook.” Her imaging steadies our gaze on what we seldom glimpse of bird or bush or hill or people, for that matter. Her heart is in the right place, which helps ours get there too.
The poems take on large ecological, cultural, personal and other issues in playing out their dramas. Consider Robbie (“Counterweight”), a farmer pressed by his wife to kill a fox that had taken two of his Bantam roosters to feed her kits. He should kill the fox, but the fox is old, he knows, probably on her last litter. He resolves the small war in him, coming down on the side of the angels: “Pardon was Robbie’s province. / Sharpening, silvering, the old mother would persist / as long as rough gods bid before her fade into the mists / the island made.” And he’d be rewarded with “hatchings and crowings since.”
There should be plenty of crowing and hosanna-singing over Margot Farrington’s The Blue Canoe of Longing. Or maybe better would be paying quiet attention and being forwarded within ourselves, with new ranges for the mind’s activity.
The Blue Canoe of Longing by Margot Farrington. Dos Madres, October 2019.
About the reviewer: Robert Bensen’s Before (2019) is his sixth book of poems. He taught at Hartwick College (1978-2017), now conducts the poetry workshop at Bright Hill Press.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The thumbnails of the Fall 2019 of Court Green mostly show silhouetted scenes of courtship—men playing musical instruments or bowing on knees before women, scenes of dancing and kissing. In her two poems, Maureen Thorson writes of a different sort of relationships and intimacy, instead focusing on family. Continue reading “Maureen Thorson Taps into Tenderness & Family”
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The writers in Volume 6 of Runestone Journal have questions. In poetry, Lex Chilson asks, “Why Am I Always Sadder During the Summer?” and in fiction, Gabraella Wescott narrator wants to know “Would God Have a Beach House?” while Holley Ziemba’s character wonders “Do I Miss Myself?” Continue reading “Runestone Journal Has Questions”
A new issue of The Shore features poetry by: Julia Bouwsma, Charlie M. Brown, Nicholas Samaras, Sarah Marquez, Nicholas Holt, Rachel Small, Noah Stetzer, Kathryn de Lancellotti, Molly Tenenbaum, Kathryn Merwin, Jenny Irish, Nicholas Molbert, Alicia Hoffman, TW Selvey, Anna Sandy-Elrod, Clifford Brooks, Stephen Furlong, and many more. It also features stunning photography by Melissa Marsh.
The Spring 2020 issue of Sheila-Na-Gig Online features the Spring Poetry Contest Winner and honorable mentions as well as poetry by T-M Baird, Rose Mary Boehm, Doug Bolling,R.T. Castleberry, Alan Catlin, Susan Darlington, Kelly Dolejsi, Tyler Dunston, Rob Hunter, Glenn Ingersoll, Stephanie Kendrick, Mercedes Lawry, Betsy Mars, Tom Montag, John Palen, Robert Strickland, Laura Grace Weldon, and more.
The Spring 2020 of Leaping Clear is out. This issue encourages readers to find balance in troubling times. Essays by Amy Sugeno, Dorian Rolston, and more; fiction by Anita Feng; mixed media by Barbara Parmet and Deborah Kennedy; music by Jon Tho; poetry by Ben Gallagher, Kathleen Hellen, Stephen Fulder, Yasmin Kloth, and more; video by Zangmo Alexander; and visual art by Denise Susanne Townsend, Michele Giulvezan-Tanner, and Stephanie Peek.
The Spring 2020 issue of Witness features the winners of their latest Witness Literary Awards.
Poetry Winner:
“Future Ruins” by Andrew Collard
Poetry Runner-up:
“You Will See It Coming & You Won’t Run” by Emmy Newman
Fiction Winner:
“Delivery” by Emily Greenberg
Poetry Runner-up:
“The Dramatic Haircut” by Kristina Ten
Nonfiction Winner:
“When a Child Offends” by Michele Sharpe
Nonfiction Runner-up:
“Ani-la and Anne-la: On Everything I Knew and Didn’t Know” by Anne Liu Kellor
Poetry was selected by Heather Lang-Cassera, fiction was selected by Kristen Arnett, and nonfiction was selected by José Roach-Orduña. The rest of the issue is “magic” themed, so grab a copy and discover the magic inside.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The October 2019 issue of About Place Journal takes readers on a journey from north (truth) to south (courage) to east (rebirth) to west (mourning). I immediately connected with a poem found in the north: “Flint” by Kendra Preston Leonard.
It would be hard to find someone who hasn’t heard about Flint, Michigan at this point. In early 2014, the city (which is only about a forty-five-minute drive from my home and is home to a handful of my friends) was in the news for their water crisis. After changing water sources to save money, residents were left with lead-poisoned water, an on-going issue in the city and the state.
Leonard writes about this in “Flint,” the speaker asking readers to “Come and drink,” “this acid” and “the sweet sweet leaded water,” to “Drink / and drink / and drink/ down this styx.” She invites those with distance to “Find out what it is to stand you here,” “where the river / adds children to the cemetery.” This lessens the distance between watching the information on the news and leading readers to really considering the humans that have been harmed by water, something that’s necessary to live.
Leonard’s imagery is enjoyable to read, despite the gravity of the poem’s message. The piece reads smoothly, flowing like a river. “Flint” is a great place to start your journey into this issue of About Place.
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, publisher of online lit mag Sheila-Na-Gig online, is not just celebrating the release of two new titles Robert DeMott’s collection of prose poems, Up Late Reading Birds of America, and Barbara Sabol’s Imagine a Town) but also two new titles in the hopper.
First they have their first-ever fiction title. This will be a re-release of John Bullock’s novel Mark Small: This is Your Life. It was previously titled Making Faces. This is a coming-of-age story set at the British seaside.
The winner of their Spring Poetry Contest, Kari Gunter-Seymour, has agreed to let them publish her forthcoming chapbook A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen. Stay tuned for more information on these titles and grab a copy of their current releases.
Oh, and don’t forget their Poetry Manuscript Contest is open through July 1 annually.
In Southeast Review‘s special Online content, John Sibley Williams interviews José Angel Araguz, a CantoMundo fellow, author of several chapbooks and collections, and the Editor-in-Chief of Salamander.
Araguz talks about how place, specifically Corpus Christi, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, has defined him, his work, and his politics.
Not only is my family’s story scattered across these two places, but some of the essential issues of our times play out on this border: immigration from a variety of countries (not just Mexico), narcotraffico, and the ensuing violence against women, children, and the poor. There is no memory that isn’t tinged with darkness, with threat and danger.
Since Araguz’s work does feature a lot of his own culture, he is asked how he approaches work to make it universal to readers of all cultures and his response is great: “I tread carefully around the word “universal.” There’s so much instability to language that to count on a poem alone, the mere words on the page, to be universal, is to invite failure.”
Learn more about José Angel Araguz, how he crafts his poetry, and how his experiences helped form his work.
Pembroke Magazine is a literary journal from the University of North Carolina Pembroke. They publish new issues annually. Grab a copy of their 2019 issue featuring poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by writers living in eighteen states and abroad while you still can. You can also subscribe today to get your hands on the 2020 issue when it is officially released.
Muhammad Ali’s greatness dances across the page, witnessed from multiple perspectives; a frustrated writer begins receiving mysterious bars of chocolate that may or may not be driving him crazy; a long-separated couple makes love as the Twin Towers fall on TV; a vulture does its terrible and necessary work; a young man and woman enjoy the romantic machinations of fate—or something else—in Venice; a man considers the many useless skills he’s accumulated in life; a college student risks her safety by hitchhiking back to campus with a mysterious trucker; and much more. Cover art by Alexander Grigoriev.
They are currently open to submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry through April 30. You even have the option of purchasing their latest issue when you submit.
Online literary magazine Blood Orange Review hosts an annual literary contest. The winners for the 2019 contest were Benjamin Bartu for his poem “Do You Love Her”; Austin Maas for his nonfiction piece “Trigger Finger”; and Joel Streicker for his story “For the Bounty Provided Us.” Read these and more in their latest issue.
Submissions are currently open through April 30 for the 2020 contest.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The March 2020 issue of Poetry includes a LatiNext folio with selections from The Breakbeat Poets Volume 4 forthcoming from Haymarket Books. This anthology “opposes silence and re-mixes the soundtrack of the Latinx diaspora across diverse poetic traditions” and the selection included in Poetry gives a good sampling of what to expect in this anthology releasing in April.
My favorites include “My Uncle’s Killer” by J. Estanislao Lopez, “Rules at the Juan Marcos Huelga School (Even the Unspoken Ones)” by Lupe Mendez, and “Lady Fine Is for Sugar” by Stephanie Roberts. Continue reading “See What’s Coming “LatiNext” in Poetry”
The “Magic” issue of Witness features new work by: Eric Tran, Mary Lane Potter, Pamela Yenser, Alex Berge, Nina Sudhakar, Andrea Eberly, Miranda Dennis, and more. Plus, the second annual Witness Literary Awards: Andrew Collard (poetry winner), Emmy Newman (poetry runner-up), Emily Greenberg (fiction winner), Kristina Ten (fiction runner-up), Michele Sharpe (nonfiction winner), and Anne Liu Kellor (nonfiction runner-up).
Here is the latest issue of Willow Springs. This issue features Roy Bentley, Michael Hettich, Andrea Jurjević, Michael McGriff, D. Nurkse who is interviewed this issue, Ira Sukrungruang, Jackson Burgess, Dante Di Stefano, Allison Hraban, Michael Hurley, Amy Seifried, Ojo Taiye, Fritz Ward, Ryan Cannon, William Walker, and more.
The latest issue of THEMA explores the theme “Six Before Eighty.” Find stories, short-shorts, poems, and photographs by Matthew J. Spireng, J. J. Steinfeld, Cherie Bowers, H.B. Salzer, James “Jack” Penha, Margo Peterson, Alison Arntz, Lisa Timpf, Lynda Fox, Yuan Changming, Georgia A. Hubley, Annie Percik, Robert Wooten, Larry Lefkowitz, and Virginia Howard.
The Spring 2020 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly celebrates “Grandparents and Other Wise Ancestors.” Featured artists include Karla Van Vliet, Julia Michie Bruckner, Paul Polydorou, and Sheri Vanermolen. Featured writers include Claire Ibarra, Angela Wright, Marianne Mersereau, Janet Sunderland, Gail Tyson, Ilene Dube, Wayne Lee, Douglas Cole, Marc Morgenstern, Denise Tolan, Kaia Gallagher, Anna Leigh Morrow, and Joe Cottonwood.
American Life in Poetry: Column 782
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I’ve mentioned the anthology, Local News: Poetry About Small Towns from MWPH Books, P.O. Box 8, in Fairwater, Wisconsin. Here’s one of the many poems I’ve enjoyed, by Scott Wiggerman, who lives in New Mexico. His latest book is Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, published by purple flag, 2015.
Johnsburg
At the top of the hill, a towering
Catholic church with Gothic spires,
below, a one-pump gas station,
a beauty parlor with a picture window,
at the town’s only four-way stop sign,
a convenience store with a bike stand,
and three smoke-drenched taverns,
their bars of the same solid wood
as the church’s hard benches,
only more polished, more worn down.
We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2019 by Scott Wiggerman, “Johnsburg,” from Local News: Poetry About Small Towns, (MWPH Books, 2019). Poem reprinted by permission of Scott Wiggerman and the publisher. Introduction copyright @2020 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
“Social Poetics” Uncovers the Poetry of Everyday Workers. By Harris Feinsod. In These Time.
Goldman and Antonio both participated in the Worker Writers School (WWS), founded by poet and activist Mark Nowak, who has offered creative writing workshops with trade unions and social movements since 2005. In Nowak’s stirring new book, Social Poetics, he documents how writing workshops can embolden workers who, to paraphrase Trinidadian historian and writer C.L.R. James, seek to chronicle their own struggles “to regain control over their own conditions of life.”
…Nowak’s work follows in the tradition of Langston Hughes, whose 1947 essay, “My Adventures as a Social Poet,” turned away from lyric poems of individual experience to the poetry of social commitment, poems that “stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color lines and colonies.” Social Poetics relates the history of this tradition: Young English Professor Celes Tisdale and the Abenaki author Joseph Bruchac, for example, created poetry classes in prisons (which included participants in the 1971 Attica uprising).
In 2020 Driftwood Press will offer two courses in its Seminar Series. The first is an Erasure Poetry Seminar instructed by Jerrod Schwarz. He is an instructor of creative writing at the University of Tampa and his own erasure poetry has appeared in PANK, Entropy, Poets Reading the News, and the Plath Project. Applications open through April 30. This course will run five weeks from June 1 through July 3. The course is entirely online.
The next course is the Editors & Writers Seminar. This is a five week online class designed for writers submitting to magazines, for writers who want to be editors of short fiction or literary magazines, and writers who want to become better editors of their own work and others’. The course will be limited to 20 students. Applications are open through April 30. Managing fiction editor of Driftwood Press, James McNulty is the instructor. The course will run from June 1 through July 3.
The Winter/Spring 2020 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review ends with a special feature—”Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada.” This literary anthology is co-edited by Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, Sarah Henzi, Sam McKegney, and Warren Cariou, who are interviewed as an introduction to their selections.
The selected winners and finalists of the Indigenous Voices Awards featured in this issue are: Mika Lafond, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Elaine McArthur, Treena Chambers, Joshua Whitehead, Nazbah Tom, Amanda Peters, Marie-Andrée Gill, Smokii Sumac, Tenille K. Campbell, Francine Merasty, J.D. Kurtness, Naomi Fontaine, Aviaq Johnston, Brandi Bird, David Agecoutay, Dawawn Dumont, and Carleigh Baker. Their work includes both poetry and prose.
Grab a copy of the latest issue of AQR to listen to the varied indigenous voices of Canada.
Runestone Journal proudly announces Volume 6, featuring: creative nonfiction from Hannah Baumgardt and True Dabill, fiction from Maryetta Henry, Gabraella Wescott, and Holley Ziemba; poetry from Lex Chilson, Marina Fec, arizona hurn, Maya Salemeh, Adam D. Weeks, and more; author interviews with Roy G. Guzmán and John Ostrander; and book reviews by the Student Editorial Board. Visit NewPages for more new issues.
Plume releases new poetry every month. In this month’s featured selection, find the second installment of the “5 under 35 Plus” feature with twelve poems by six exceptional poets: JK Anowe, Charlotte Covey, Benjamin Garcia, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Lindsay Lusby, and Sarah Uheida. Alfred Corn provides five flash for the nonfiction section, and Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Paisley Rekdal’s Nightingale. Plus, more in this month’s regular poetry selections.
The Mar/Apr Kenyon Review features a special prose section, “The Unexpected,” guest-edited by Jaquira Díaz. Díaz selected work by Lars Horn, Gabriel Louis, Rebecca Nison, Joseph Earl Thomas, Laurie Thomas, and LaToya Watkins. In addition, the issue includes the winning essay and two runners-up from our 2019 Short Nonfiction Contest: “Hello, Fridge” by Anna Hartford, “Saving Luna” by KT Sparks, and “The Great Glass Closet” by Benjamin Garcia. The issue also includes poetry by Erin Belieu, Destiny O. Birdsong, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Heid E. Erdrich, Linda Gregerson, Ted Kooser, Sally Wen Mao, Michael McGriff, and Bruce Snider.
Love on the mind? Visit Ecotone‘s “The Love Issue.” Inside, Jennifer Tseng & Amanda Tseng envision their father, Sarah Seldomridge & Eduardo Espada draw the beginnings of a family, Silas House sings of a boy’s first love, and Jennifer Elise Foerster reads Jane Johnston Schoolcraft. Plus, sonnets, rondels prime, sonzals, and brefs double, from Chad Abushanab, Ashley M. Jones, Amit Majmudar, and A. E. Stallings.
The March 2020 issue of Diode Poetry Journal is with brand new poetry by TR Brady, Brandon Jordan Brown, Sarah A. Chavez, Brian Glaser, Sarah Gridley, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, KA Hays, Kathleen Heil, Janiru Liyanage, Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, Luisa Caycedo-Kimura & Dean Rader, Virginia Konchan, Amit Majmudar, Christopher McCurry, Cindy Hunter Morgan, JoAnna Novak, Meghan Privitello, Iliana Rocha, Daniel Ruiz, Aaron Samuels, Nate Slawson, Kelly Grace Thomas, Svetlana Turetskaya, Jorrell Watkins, Rewa Zeinati, and Jane Zwart.
The Fall 2019 issue of Cimarron Review offers poetry by Jacqueline Winter Thomas, Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson, Luke Patterson, Ainsley Kelly, Anne Delana Reeves, Khaleel Gheba, Zach Mueller, Dayna Patterson, Laura Green, Adam Clay, Sophia Stid, Margaret Cipriano, G.C. Waldrep, and Athena Kildegaard; fiction by Robin Becker, Catherine Wong, JP Gritton, and Clancy McGlligan; and nonfiction by Danielle Thien. Our cover art is “Esotrope” by Monica McFawn.
AQR’s Winter & Spring 2020 edition features stories by Joy Lanzendorfer, Elise Juska, Matthew Lansburgh, and Patricia Page. Also featured are stories by Katya Apekina, Molly Gutman, Daniel Pearce, and Kirsten Madsen. The edition also includes three engaging personal essays, an exceptional collection of poems by twenty-four poets, and a special anthology “Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada.” These voices include Mika Lafond, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Smokii Sumac, Tenille K. Campbell, Francine Merasty, J.D. Kurtness, Brandi Bird, and more.
The Winter 2020 issue of Qu Literary Magazine is out. Fiction by Renay Costa and Kevin M. Kearny; nonfiction by Jackie Kenny and Stephanie Dickinson; and poetry by Betty Rosen, nicole v basta, Sara Moore Wagner, Tom C. Hunley, Kelly Weber, and Elsa Ball. Patricia Powell provides “On Listening” in our “The Writing Life” section, and in stage/screen writing: Kate McMorran and Libby M. Gardner.
The latest issue of The 2River View features poems by Bruce Alford, Josette Akresh-Gonzales, Matthew Freeman, Abriana Jetté, Brady Thomas Kamphenkel, Tanner Lee, Tatiana Retivov, Samn Stockwell, Teresa Sutton, and John Whalen. Art from this issue is by Megan Duncanson.
Online literary magazine Blood Orange Review released Volume 11.2 in January 2020. This issue was delayed a bit as they worked hard on relaunching their site with a new design.
The majority of artwork featured in this issue was gathered from visual art MFA students at Washington University: Siri Margaret Stensberg, Stephanie Broussard, and Kelsey Baker. Also featured in this issue is art from Sarah Hussein who hales from Egypt.
Besides art, find poetry by Hussain Ahmed, Benjamin Bartu, John Byrne, Isiah Fish, Joseph Gunho Jang, Maya Marshall, and Kim Young; nonfiction by Sarah Rose Cadorette, Kelly Hill, and Austin Maas; and fiction by Wandeka Gayle, Arielle Jones, Sakae Manning, Lois Melina, and Joel Streicker.
Blood Orange Review is currently open to general and contest submissions.
Rattle’s special features always help spice up an issue. It’s fun to see what has been included in each issue’s theme and how the writers fit inside it. In the Spring 2020 issue, readers can find a “special tribute section of poems written by students of Kim Addonizio’s poetry workshops (as well as one poem by Kim herself).” An interview with Addonizio is also included after the poetry selections. In addition to her poems, there are pieces by sixteen of her students covering a wide array of topics. Parenthood, love for pets, politics, sex, and suicide just scratch the surface of what these poets focus on in this feature. Grab yourself a copy of this issue of Rattle to discover the full selection Addonizio and her students offer us.
Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis for the 9th annual Chesapeake Writers’ Conference. The event takes place June 21 through 27. This year’s faculty includes Liz Arnold, Matt Burgess, Patricia Henley, Crystal Brandt, Angela Pelster, and Matthew Henry Hall.
This year they will be offering workshops in songwriting along with workshops in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, translation, and creative nonfiction. They also offer craft talks, lectures, readings, and panel discussions, plus a youth workshop.
Scholarships, course credit, and continuing professional development are also available. There is no fee to apply. Learn more…
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
There’s something simple and sweet in “One Narrow Street in Tokyo” by L. Davis, published in the Winter 2020 issue of The Main Street Rag, and it’s that simplicity that drew me into it. The language is sparse, and so is the poem itself, taking up just a tiny sliver of text on each side of the page.
Davis captures a small section of time in which life changes for a girl, a life so fleeting compared to that of the shrine she passes. A nearly mystical aura lingers around the fox that watches from its home in the shrine. Davis uses no punctuation used in this piece, sweeping readers up into the scene and to the end in one seamless motion. I read it over and over, letting it wash over me, my eye originally caught by the poem’s formatting. Short and sweet, it’s a good place to start with this issue of The Main Street Rag.
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: https://www.newpages.com/.
The Writer’s Hotel’s All-Fiction Conference will take place June 3 through 9 in NYC. The deadline for writers to apply is March 22 at midnight. There is a $30 application fee.
Faculty this year includes Rick Moody, Jeffrey Ford, Robyn Schneider, Michael Thomas, Ernesto Quiñonez, James Patrick Kelly, Elizabeth Hand, Francine Prose, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Sapphire, Elyssa East, Kevin Larimer, Steven Salpeter, Jennie Dunham, Shanna McNair, and Scott Wolven.
New in 2020: The Writer’s Hotel is now offering NYC Weekends which are shorter conferences in the genres of poetry and nonfiction.
The deadline to apply to the Poetry Weekend is listed as March 15. This conference will take place May 21 through 25. Faculty for this event includes Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Terrance Hayes, Nick Flynn, Deborah Landau, Alexandra Oliver, Kevin Larimer, Jenny Xie, Shanna McNair, and Scott Wolven.
The Poetry Weekend is capped at 40 participants. There is a $30 fee to apply. If they reach 40 participants before the deadline, the application form will close early.
The Nonfiction Weekend will take place October 1-5. Faculty this year includes Mark Doty, Meghan Daum, Hisham Matar, Honor Moore, Elyssa East, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Shanna McNair, and Scott Wolven.
The Nonfiction Weekend is capped at 40 participants. There is a $30 fee to apply.
The theme for Nimrod‘s latest issue “Words at Play” sounds like a lot of fun. Learn more about it: featuring fiction by Gauraa Shekhar, Sean Bernard, Jackson Ingram, and Alison Ho; nonfiction by JJ Peña; and poetry by James Toupin, Joanna Gordon, Michelle Penn, Wendy Drexler, Holly Painter, Gabriel Spera, Amy Miller, Matthew J. Spireng, George Looney, Ellen Kombiyil, Margot Kahn, Myra Shapiro, Cindy Veach, Katy Day, Marjorie Maddox, Brooke Sahni, Ella Flores, Madeline Grigg, Jean-Mark Sens, Nicholas Yingling, and more.
The cover of Poetry‘s March 2020 issue is inviting. Learn what’s inside: a “Latinext” feature with work by Willie Perdomo, Féi Hernandez, Naomi Ayala, J. Estanislao Lopez, Stephanie Roberts, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Ashley August, Nicole Sealey, Noel Quiñones, Virgil Suárez, P.E. Garcia, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Sergio Lima, Anthony Morales, Anaïs Deal-Márquez, Lupe Mendez, and Melinda Hernandez. Plus more poetry by John McAuliffe, Douglas Kearney, Robin Gow, Jennifer Chang, Suzi F. Garcia, Luther Hughes, Yusef Komunyakaa, John Kinsella & Thurston Moore, Caroline Bird, and more. Nonfiction by Matthew Bevis.