Published out of Mississippi Valley State University, Valley Voices Spring 2026 opens with “A Poetic Duet: An Interview with Tobi Alfier and Jeffrey Alfier” and continues with “Transience” a photo essay by Claudia Brefeld, spotlighting photos on “passing away” and “traces of time that become visible and highlight transience. This transience has a special beauty and melancholy inherent in it. And so, each photo tells its own story.”

Readers will also enjoy fiction and nonfiction by Jacqueline St. Joan, Charlie R. Braxton, Daniel Webre, and Susan Duke, and poetry from Michael Catherwood, V. P. Loggins, Charles Rammelkamp, Philip C. Kolin, Kerri L. Bennett, Caitlyn Burns, Patricia L. Hamilton, Susana H. Case, Susan Weaver, Bradley R. Strahan, Will Limehouse, Kelly Talbot, Bert Molsom and many more.

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Valley Voices is a biannual journal of prose, poetry, interviews, and criticism from writers and scholars from the Mississippi Delta and beyond. The Fall 2025 issue includes the special features “Photographing Nature” by Jerome Berglund; “African American Tanka” by Kevin Powell, Lenard D. Moore, L. Teresa Church, Gideon Young, Opal Palmer Adisa, Tara Betts, S. Shaw, Charlie R. Braxton, and Gina Streaty; and Ce Rosenow’s review of Runagate: Song of the Freedom Bound by Crystal Simone Smith. Editor John Zheng in his introduction writes, “Editing an issue of Valley Voices is like an escape to nature or a way to forget the self.” The same experience awaits readers in the essays and criticisms of Howard Lee Kilby, Charlie R. Braxton, Bernth Lindfors, Carolyn Wilson-Scott, and Sydney Bowen-Sweet, and poetry by JC Alfier, Tobi Alfier, Matthew Brennan, Lenard D. Moore, Andrew Riutta, Jerome Berglund, Mike Spikes, Beth Brown Preston, Ron McFarland, Thomas Piekarski, George Freek, and Ken Letko.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

The Spring 2025 issue of Valley Voices is a special issue themed “River and Land: The Mississippi Delta” and is dedicated to Dr. Jerry W. Ward, Jr. (July 31, 1943 — February 8, 2025) “respectful board member, scholar, and friend.”

In celebration of Dr. Jerry W. Ward’s legacy is an interview with Dr. Ward, poetry, literary theorist, editor, professor, and cultural activist, conducted by C Liegh McInnis on July 18, 2007, Charlie Braxton’s poem, “Doc,” and the essay “This is Not a Poem #1 (For Doc Ward)” by McInnis.

Opening the themed content “River and Land: The Mississippi Delta” are “Prim Notes” and “Hurricane Isabel 2003: True Story” by Hermine Pinson and “The Geography of Self: An Interview with Hermine Pinson” by Editor John Zheng. Also featured are poems by Claude Wilkinson, Sterling D. Plumpp, Larry D. Thomas, George Drew, Philip C. Kolin, CT Salazar, C Liegh McInnis, and Michelle McMillan-Holifield; art/photography by Claude Wilkinson (including cover art) and J. Guaner; fiction/nonfiction by Jack Crocker and Dick Daniels.

Criticism pieces include “From Trauma to Triumph: Endesha Ida Mae Holland’s From the Mississippi Delta: A Memoir” by John J. Han, and “Mississippi Masochism: Agentic Pain in Jesmyn Ward’s Where the Line Bleeds and Claude Wilkinson’s World Without End” by Allison Wiltshire.

The Fall 2023 issue of Valley Voices includes contributions about experiences of memorable moments in the Civil Rights Movement. Robert Butler’s short memoir presents his experience as a teacher at Tougaloo College and his participation as a marcher in Port Gibson. Diane Williams remembers the riots in Newark, New Jersey, in 1967 when she was a 14-year-old girl.

Creative expressions by other writers include poetic tributes to historical figures, immigrant life, police violence, and racial crimes. Toru Kiuchi’s essay surveys the Kokura Incident and its significance as “a trigger for a true and definite integration in the Army and in the United States.” Charlie R. Braxton’s essay discusses human rights in Africa. Further, Mack Hassler’s empathetic poem about the goose and Ted McCormack’s essay about collective wisdom lead to other issues as well as harmony rather than discord in our global society.

Although Valley Voices has decided not to publish reviews anymore, it did gather a few related to the theme of the issue, including Jerome Berglund’s review of William R. Ferris’s book of photography, I Am A Man.

The theme of the 2023 spring issue of Valley Voices is “Goodbye,” which may mean departure, detachment, death, divorce, breakup, change for a new life, promising career, or bright future. There are different ways to say goodbye, such as farewell, adieu, bon voyage, or zaijian. Sometimes the word carries nuances of meaning. Pretty much the opposite of the word is badbye or sadbye, so bye can be awful, beautiful, fearful, joyful, mournful, mirthful, painful, peaceful, sorrowful, tearful, or wistful. Goodbye has been a charming theme that attracts writers to explore from different viewpoints. This special issue includes 7 fiction/nonfiction, a photo essay about the South, poetry by 24 poets, 10 book reviews, and a featured interview with DC Berry.

The call for the Fall 2022 issue of Valley Voices (v22 n2) was themed, “Where Are You From?” and meant to be a simple question that may not have a simple answer. In his introduction, John Zheng writes, “There are different answers because the question can be geographical, political, racial, and ethnic, it can also mean curiosity, attitude, suspicion, or exclusion.” This issue spotlights Mississippi Delta poet and musician Jack Crocker, and in response to the call, includes over 100 pages of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and reviews. A full table of contents can be found for each issue on the Valley Voices‘ website. Writers – the next call for submissions ends December 30, 2022, and the theme for their spring issue is “Goodbye.”