Find the latest news from literary and alternative magazines including new issues, editorial openings, and much more.
The Summer 2021 issue of Emerald City is out. New work by Brittany Ackerman, Dante Di Stefano, Melissa Feinman, Frenci Nguyen, Francesca Halikias, Liam Strong, T.D. Johnston, Sarah Rose Cadorette, and Michael Putnam. More info at the Emerald City website.
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.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
Shoshana Akabas begins “By the Creeks of Wyoming” with just a hint of what’s happening: “Aspen leans over and says, ‘You know, Natalie’s telling everyone about your brother,’ [ . . . ].” Who is Natalie and what’s going on with the narrator’s brother? Akabas hooks us into the story and then reels slowly, the answers appearing one by one, so brief they could almost be overlooked.
While the story of what happened to the narrator’s brother becomes distorted through the gossip of Natalie, the narrator’s friend who is slowly drifting in a different direction now that they’re in high school, it becomes clearer for the readers each time the narrator responds to the classmates who have heard the gossip. I loved this slow burn, the piecing together of the puzzle until the full picture is revealed.
The narrator’s brother plays a large role in the story, but Akabas chooses never to actually place him in the story. He’s always on the other side of the door or wall, an unreachable and almost legendary figure.
Melancholy and rife with the emotional ups and downs of high school, “By the Creeks of Wyoming,” is a quick yet beautiful read.
“By the Creeks of Wyoming” by Shoshana Akabas. AGNI, 2021.
Our first issue of volume three is ready and free to read on our site. Find work by Jenny Hykes Jiang, Jacqueline Staikos, Tara Isabel Zambrano, Lindy Biller, Christina Yoseph, Akhim Alexis, Richard Lingo, and more. Find a full list of contributors at the Chestnut Review website.
Stop by and peruse our ever-growing Summer Online Edition! Escape into the world of “Dispatches from the Poetry Wars” as presented in an interview with creators Michael Boughn and Kent Johnson. Turn a corner with Kent and enter the synchronous world of César Aira in “How I Became the Narrator of a César Aira Novel.” Reviews of poetry by Nico Vassilakis; nonfiction exploring Black Mountain writers John Wieners and Larry Eigner; and more. See what else is online at the Rain Taxi website.
The July/August issue of the Kenyon Review features work by two poets who piercingly explore race and historical memory at a time when these issues seem more urgent than ever before. The noted writer Paisley Rekdal offers three poems from the online project “West: A Translation.” The issue also includes two poems by Bryan Byrdlong, whose work interrogates the figure of the zombie as it relates to Blackness and Black precarity in the face of white supremacy, and as a general symbol for those struggling with marginalization. Plus work by Betsy Boyd, Perry Lopez, Christopher Blackman, Kelsey Norris, Austyn Gaffney, and more. Read more at the Kenyon Review website.
In this summer issue of Kaleidoscope, we have personal essays, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, a book review, a dance feature, and information regarding the release of the documentary film Fierce Love and Art. Featured essay by Kimberly Roblin. Featured art by Diane Reid. Additional work by Mariana Abeid-McDougall, Dyland Ward, Carrie Jade Williams, and more. See a further list of contributors at the Kaleidoscope website.
In this issue, Jesse Graves delves into that complicated space where family connects with history and place in three poems that begin with “An Exile.” Ace Boggess tells the story of the winding road the carries eight men to a West Virginia penitentiary in “Welcome to Rock Haul.” Amy Wright remembers the summer after her brother died from cancer, and the line of communication that opened, in “Life After Death,” an excerpt from her forthcoming book Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round. Read more at the Cutleaf website.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Rage Hezekiah has three poems in the Summer 2021 issue of Colorado Review. Of these, “Not For Us” stuck out to me the most, visually grabbing my attention as I paged through the issue.
“Not For Us” is an erasure of rejection letters. I assume these were taken from publication rejections, and appreciated the poet’s ability to create new writing out of these. The reader takes in the sparse words left over and it’s interesting to see how similar the language is, the repetition leading the reader’s eyes over the two-page spread of rejections.
Hezekiah’s piece is a good reminder that just because something is “not for us,” doesn’t mean that’s the end.
“Not For Us” by Rage Hezekiah. Colorado Review, Summer 2021.
If you enjoy literary podcasts as well as ekphrastic writing and art appreciation, you may want to check out TERcets. This is the literary podcast of The Ekphrastic Review.
They just uploaded their 9th episode on July 15 to Spotify and in this episode they launched something new. Instead of the host Brian Salmons reading the work, they have the writers themselves reading their pieces. This episode brings you works by Courtney Justus, Anthony DiMatteo, and Sara Eddy. Past episodes have featured the works of Margo Davis, Faith Kaltenbach, Anita Nahal, and more. And these are short listens ranging from 10 to 20 minutes, so you can spend your coffee break or lunch listening to some works by amazing writers.
In Zone 3‘s Spring 2021 issue you’ll find poetry by Olivia Kingery, Kat Neis, Alyse Knorr, D.C. Leonhardt, Alice Turski, Naoko Fujimoto, John Allen Taylor, Emma Aylor, Jessica Hincapie, Alicia Mountain, Anthony Sutton, Benjamin Cutler, Camille Ferguson, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Laura Walker, and more. See prose contributors at the Zone 3 website.
What’s new this month? Collagegraphs, phenomenal 3D modeling, hybrid landscapes, and more! Work by Manar Ali Hassan, Jasper de Beijer, Christine Crockett, N.R. Hills, Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, and others. See a full list of contributors at The Woven Tale Press website.
This year’s issue of The Meadow features nonfiction by Shaun T. Griffin and John Ballantine; fiction by A.M. Potter, Saramanda Swigart, Karly Campbell, Oreoluwa Oladimeji, Alex Moore, Mark Wagstaff, Meredith Kay, Thomas Christopher, and Eileen Bordy; and poetry by Joseph Fasano, Lisa Zimmerman, Doris Ferleger, Nancy White, Savannah Cooper, and more. See more contributors at The Meadow website.
The July/August issue is live! Inside, you’ll find essays and flash CNF such as: “Lake of the Ozarks, Osage Beach, Missouri” by Dawn-Michelle Baude, “A Very Good Liar” by Erin Branning, “Sharp” by Vanessa Chan, “11,000 People Lying Facedown on the Burnside Bridge” by Benjamin McPherson Ficklin, “Warsaw Ghetto Boy” by Sharon Goldman, and more. See more content at the Hippocampus Magazine website.
This issue of Cutleaf is now at the Mag Stand. It features excerpts from Vanishing Point, Dirk Marple’s hybrid memoir on handwritten postcards with original images. The text and images were part of ninety-two numbered postcards mailed over time to Marple’s thesis advisor, Jenny Boully.
The Summer 2021 issue features work by Rage Hezekiah, Patricia Liu, Neha Mulay, Bradley Bazzle, and Sarah Curtis. Also in this issue: Tom Howard, Lance Olsen, Nikki Ervice, Jehanne Dubrow, Richard Zonnenmoser, Darren C. Demaree, and more. See a full list of contributors at the Colorado Review website.
A new issue is here featuring nonfiction by Tricia Park, Lindsay Rutherford, Courtney Elizabeth Young, and KC Pedersen; short stories by Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross, Lizzy Lemieux, Dylan Cook, and Marc Tweed; and a visual narrative by Emily Steinberg. See a full list of contributors at the Cleaver Magazine website.
New flash fiction by Andrew Kozma, Mary Beth Hines, Ben Umayam, Alyssa Kagel, Leslie Anne Mcilroy, Thomas Broderick, Salvatore Difalco, Kaylor Jones, Douglas DiCicco, and Paul Lamar. Read more at the Brilliant Flash Fiction website.
The summer issue includes fiction by L. Shapley Bassen, Grace Ford, David Henson, M.F. McAuliffe, and more; poetry by Carolyn Adams, J.R. Solonche, Torri Hammonds, Elizabeth Train-Brown, James Croal Jackson, and Matt Zachary; and nonfiction by Anita Kestin, Eve Müller, and more. Art by Ryan Heshka. See what else is in this issue at The Writing Disorder website.
Under a Warm Green Linden Issue 11 is live! Read new work by 21 astonishing poets and translators. Work by Hasan Alizadeh, James Dott, Payam Feili, Emily Franklin, Dennis Hinrichsen, and others. See a list of more contributors at the Under a Warm Green Linden website.
Issue 6 is our largest issue yet, with works that honor wild plants and flowers in the poems of Meenakshi Palaniappan and Maria Nemy Lou Rocio, as well as the photography of Heather Teo. We enter forests with Tanvi Dutta Gupta and Zen Teh, we marvel at the moon’s music and magic with Sofia Wutong Rain and Lauren Bolger. We navigate sorrow and loss with Thomas Bacon and we grow old with Cassandra J. O’Loughlin. The bilingual poems of Fran Fernández Arce and Joshua Ip take us to the fields and rivers of language and dreams, while Danielle Fleming dreams her speaker into memory, tree, and elephant song. Plus more at The Tiger Moth Review website.
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 17th issue features poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from contributors around the globe. Accomplished, well-established authors are published—side by side—with fresh, emerging voices. Readers are provided with a powerful, focused literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. Always free to access, and always free from advertising, discover what over 90,000 readers in 145 countries already know; the finest new writing is here, at your fingertips.
Our summer issue includes many examples of lives forged by experience. The characters in these poems and stories are shaped and revealed by what they endure. There is heat and pressure in Alex Pickens’ “Derecho.” Shamarang Silas’s poem “The Weight of Trains,” inquires, “What is worship if not the desire to offer yourself to the fire / & everything you have ever loved?” Find out more at the Ruminate website.
New fiction and essays range across the US—driving, riverboating, skateboarding—and reckon with both the tragic and the mundane. This issue also brings a distinct Slavic and post-Soviet presence, both through works in translation and original writing by contemporary Anglophones. Poetry by Kaveh Akbar, Ellen Bass, Christopher DeWeese, Marilyn Hacker, Rachel Hadas, Dana Levin, Ada Limón, Wayne Miller, Eric Pankey, G. C. Waldrep, and more. See even more contributors at the New England Review website.
Each season, The LaHave Review publishes one poem and an interview about craft. The Summer 2021 issue features “Rockaway Beach 110” by Denise Jarrott who then answers three questions.
This is a large issue, which seems fitting as we climb out of the Covid existence we’ve all been living—hopefully. So let the number, variety, and breadth of voices here signal a steady return to health, here at home and abroad. We continue to publish both young writers, just starting out—as young as 16 in this issue! — as well as well-established writers/creative artists with impressive resumes.
It’s our hope this issue of Change Seven will offer readers solace. In addition to the wonderful essays, stories, and poems you’ve come to expect from the magazine, this issue features a sparkling conversation with Deesha Philyaw and Crystal Wilkinson, and stunning visual art from Boon LEE, Shelby McIntosh and george l stein. Fiction by Christopher Acker, Lauren Dennis, Mike Herndon, Kerry Langan, and more.
Issue 33 features poetry by TR Brady, Despy Boutris, Chelsea Harlan, Anthony Thomas Lombardi, Rita Mookerjee, Olivia Muenz, Dustin Pearson, Jaz Sufi, Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, Ross White, and more; fiction by Kathleen Gullion, Colleen Mayo, R.S. Powers, Stephanie C. Trott, and Lucy Zhang; and essays by Elijah Hayes and Hannah VanderHart. Plus, more.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
Visiting trampset‘s website, I had a problem. A good problem. I suddenly had five tabs of fiction open the moment I got there, unable to decide where to start. I wanted to read everything! I blew through the short fiction, enjoying each one, especially Kyle Seibel’s “The Two Women.”
This story is told as if the narrator is writing a letter to their ex-partner, Liz. There is an urgency to connect with Liz and get down the details of a strange day, a fever dream of a day with odd details that also somehow seem incredibly real in their zaniness. The narrator is approached by two women, one offering help and one asking for help. These women and the narrator’s neighbor all appear as odd characters, and the story is told with a humorous voice, but is still filled with heart. The silliness gives the narrator a realization: “[ . . . ] my brain is buzzing because I’m starting to feel like the rest of my life, the life I’m living without you, will be a series of events that make less and less sense until I will be completely untethered from the planet.” With this, the strangeness becomes normal—who hasn’t felt lost and untethered after a big loss?
There is no shortage of good reads at trampset, but if you’re unsure of where to start, give “The Two Women” a try.
“The Two Women” by Kyle Seibel. trampset, June 2021.
Sometimes good writing needs a second look, and online literary magazine One agrees with that statement. The “Second Look” section on their website gives writers room to take a second look at their favorite poems and discuss what they enjoy about the work.
For Issue 23, the latest issue, Simon Anton Diego Baena takes a look at Federico Garcia Lorca’s “The City That Does Not Sleep (Nightsong of Brooklyn Bridge).” He gives a little background about the piece and the poet, and then breaks it down. Readers can also see the piece performed by Grainne Delaney with an embedded YouTube video by Jesus Queijas.
And that’s just the latest issue—there are plenty of other writers giving second looks in this section of One‘s website, offering readers a great way to learn with a mini, easily digestible poetry lesson.
The latest issue of Southern Humanities features poetry by Hala Alyan, Anne Barngrover, Jordan Escobar, Rhienna Renée Guedry, Sjohnna Mccray, Immanuel Mifsud, Anna Newman, Kimberly Ramos, Karen Rigby, Brett Shaw, Travis Tate, and Ruth Ward; fiction by Ser Álida, Leslie Blanco, Benjamin Murray, and Glen Pourciau; and nonfiction by Myronn Hardy and Ian Spangler. Find more info at the Southern Humanities Review website.
In this issue of Poetry, enjoy poetry by L. Lamar Wilson, Aliyah Cotton, Joann Balingit, Debora Kuan, Kimberly Casey, Jacqueline Allen Trimble, Pablo Otavalo, Elizabeth Bradfield, Nabila Lovelace, Hyejung Kook, Kwoya Fagin Maples, Crystal Simone Smith, Laura Secord, Jason Méndez, Charlotte Pence, Janice Lobo Sapigao, Alina Stefanescu, Beth Ann Fennelly, Josh Alex Baker, Sofia M. Starnes, Voice Porter, and more.
The expanded Summer 2021 issue of World Literature Today foregrounds Palestine Voices in a cover feature showcasing 30 of the most prominent poets and writers from the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the diaspora, guest-edited by Yousef Khanfar + poetry & fiction from Hong Kong, Hungary, and South Korea.
The July issue is now online featuring John Bartlett, Mike Dillon, Sarah L. Dixon, Alan Elyshevitz, Edilson Ferreira, Paul Jones, James McLaughlin, Ronald Moran, Tony Press, Estelle Price, Claudia Serea, Simon Williams.
Thrilled to announce the new summer issue of Jewish Fiction .net! A gift to imbibe this summer along with your favourite cool drink: 10 beautiful stories, originally written in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. We invite you also to join Jewish Fiction .net on July 13 for an online program in celebration of our 10th anniversary year: “Jewish Fiction Written in 16 Languages: Stories as Reflections of Jewish Life Across Time and Place.”
Volume 32.1 is here! Hot off the press, and filled with beautiful poems, stories, essays, and art. Poetry by Mary Ardery, Joshua Boettiger, Tianna Bratcher, Dana Curtis, Kenneth Jakubas, Naomi Ling, Sara Mae, Myles Taylor, and more; fiction by Jeremy Griffin, Greg Johnson, and Candice May; and nonfiction by Gary Fincke, Ainsley McWha, and others. See more contributors at the december website.
A new issue of Club Plum is out. In Volume 2 Issue 2: flash fiction by Linda Saldaña; prose poetry by Mike James, Kristen Roach, and Sean Rys; hybrid by Katherine Cart, Ann Stewart McBee, Jesse Millner, and t.m. thomson; and art by Carolyn Adams, Allison Janicki, Rebecca Ledbetter, Joe Lugara, and Michal Mitak Mahgerefteh.
The theme of this issue is The Art of Isolation: Finding a Silver Lining in the Pandemic Response. It includes the work of roughly fifty artists and writers from around the world. Find more info at the Still Point Arts Quarterly website.
Salamander #52 features poetry from Anemone Beaulier, Stephanie Burt, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Leila Chatti, JD Debris, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Charles Douthat, Ananda Lima, Angie Macri, Ricky Ray, Rochelle Robinson-Dukes, Leah Umansky, Sara Moore Wagner, Yun Wang, Erica Wright, Maria Zoccola.
The 2021 Issue #49 of the Paterson Literary Review features poetry, fiction, essays, memoir, and reviews, and includes all the winning and honorable mention poems for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Work by Jan Beatty, Jack Ridl, Nellie Wong, R. Bremner, Seema Tepper, Vida Chu, and more.
Short stories “Work” by Chad Szalkowski-Ference and “Haze” by Mike Nees take you across the white plains of the Tularosa Basin and into a hazy apartment complex. From joyous lyricism to stark realism, the poems this issue are a bricolage of loss, grief, solitude, and joy. Wrapping up the issue are visual arts and comics by Kelsey M. Evans, Rachel Singel, Dustin Jacobus, Lia Barsotti Hiltz, Coco Picard, and Laila Milevski. Read more at the Driftwood Press website.
Unforeseen urgencies, heightened introspections. The long Covid siege has put pressure on everything, not least the expressive arts. AGNI 93, with its unsettling cover and art portfolio by Deepa Jayaraman, channels the mood of the times. The issue includes poetry by Rafael Campo, Hope Wabuke, and others, and more. Check out the AGNI website to see what else is in this issue.
I am delighted each time the annual Rattle Young Poets Anthology appears wrapped in the package with the companion issue of Rattle. Over twenty poets ranging from age five to fifteen are featured in this year’s publication. It would be easy to fall into the trap of saying, “These are great poems for writers so young,” when the truth is quite simply: These are great poems. The opening work by Maria Arrango, “¿Identity?” which begins “El president Donald Trump said / they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. // My brown sugar skin delicately / compresses me with warmth / as I try to understand / the anatomy of my body.” is the immediate indicator that these young poets hold their own among their elder peers. Age is indeed just a number.
There are poems that disrupt the idea of idyllic youth, such as Matthew Burk’s “The Roller Coaster” and Maria Gil Harris’s “Like Magic,” as well as those that confront reality, like Adrianna Ho’s “Pasta Sandwiches in Quarantine” and Ivy Hoffman’s “Only Days Before Leaving for College, I Note the Existence of My Brother.” Some poems reach deep to connect imagery and emotion: Ha Trang Tran’s “A Love Letter for Home,” imagining a “grand return” to Hà Nộ, and Hannah Straub’s “Cadillac Mountain” with haunting lines like, “Though I was not falling / I was stumbling, in the way I clung to people / I could not reach, memories as useless / As the wire guardrails.” And there are plenty of works that raised a smile through their intellectual rhetoric, like “The Weight of Heavens” by Emma Hoff, which begins with the barb, “Was the minotaur / Really / A monster?” Kakul Gupta’s “Ten Haiku” are each effective meditations, and Mackenzie Munoz’s “Catching Dreams” reaches the metaphysic, while other works were just plain fun, like Paul Ghatak’s “Counting to One,” Grant’s “Lions Roar,” and Melissa A. Di Martino’s “Saive Me By Thes Wendrous.” Shreya Vikram’s “DIY Project” is the kind of poem that can only be experienced, and with good reason, as, in response to the Contributor’s Note question, “Why do you like writing poetry?” Vikram’s answer begins, “Without poetry, I’d waste language.”
For any readers out there with young writers in your circle, please introduce them to Rattle and this annual collection. It’s essential for young writers to connect with other young writers and find encouragement for their own reading, writing, and submissions. For more resources, check out the NewPages Young Writers Guide to Publications and NewPages Young Writers Guide to Contests.
[It is challenging to include mention of every work in a review, but I want to acknowledge the remaining poets from this collection and commend them for their contributions, all of which brought me immense pleasure to read: Natalia Chepel, Natalie Friis, Kevin Gu, Jessie Johnson, Dahee Joy Kang, Chloe Lin, Naomi Ling, Joseph Miner, and Perry Sloan.]
The summer issue of The Shore is stocked with simmering poetry by Linday Lusby, Jenn Koiter, Sarah Brockhaus, Grace Li, Karen Rigby, Brittany Atkinson, Erin Wilson, John Sibley Williams, Paul Ilechko, Audrey Gidman, Stella Lei, Todd Osborne, Bobby Parrott, William Littlejohn-Oram, David Ford, Matthew Valades, and more.
The June 2021 issue of Poetry is out. In this issue, we are brought back to the body. Poetry by Lauren Whitehead, Felicia Zamora, Xaire, Cathy Linh Che, Lindsay Stuart Hill, Darius V. Daughtry, Christa Romanosky, Annik Adey-Babinski, Susan Browne, Sandra Gustin, Michaella Batten, Julia Edwards, Austin Rodenbiker, Tina Mozelle Braziel, Nyah Hardmon, Amorette “Epiphany” Lormil, Nicole Cooley, Ray McManus, and Marlanda Dekine-Sapient Soul. Nonfiction by Laura Kolbe.
A Gathering of Poets. Featuring work by Aracelis Girmay, Barbara Ras, Stacy Gnall, Claire Denson, Katie Berta, Merridawn Duckler, Varun Ravindran, Emily VIzzo, Andrew Hemmert, April Goldman, Enrique Servín Herrera translated by Katherine Silver and Robin Myers, Pedro Mir translated by Jonathan Cohen, and more. Read more at The Massachusetts Review website.
The Georgia Review’s Summer 2021 issue is now available for purchase. This issue features new writing from Eliot Weinberger, Laura Kasischke, jayy dodd, Shangyang Fang, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and many more, along with a translation of Kim Seehee’s fiction by Paige Aniyah Morris, an interview with Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Calvin Trillin on desegregation at the University of Georgia, and a special section on W. E. B. Du Bois’s influential 1900 data portraits on Black life in Georgia, which includes responses from both sociologist Janeria Easley and poets Vanessa Angélica Villarreal and Keith S. Wilson.
Deadline: Year-round
The Blue Mountain Review launched from Athens, Georgia in 2015 with the mantra, “We’re all south of somewhere.” As a journal of culture, the BMR strives to represent all life through its stories. Stories are vital to our survival. What we sing saves the soul. Our goal is to preserve and promote lives told well through prose, poetry, music, and the visual arts. We’ve published work from Jericho Brown, Kelli Russell Agodon, Robert Pinsky, Rising Appalachia, Turkuaz, Michel Stone, Michael Flohr, Lee Herrick, Chen Chen, Michael Cudlitz, Pat Metheny, Melissa Studdard, Lyrics Born, Terry Kay, and Christopher Moore. bluemountainreview.submittable.com/submit
The latest issue of Blue Mountain Review has plenty to offer readers! Literary interviews featuring Chen Chen, Jose Hernandez Diax, Diane Goettel, Chip Delany, and more; music interviews with Pat Metheny, Adam Gussow, and others; and visual arts interviews with Daniel McClendon and Natalia Anciso.
The summer 2021 issue of West Trade Review features fiction by Desmond Fuller and Gregory Borse; poetry by Gina Marie Bernard, Monica Mills, Gaven Wallace, Anna Zwade, Yasmina Martin, Ann Weil, John M. Davis, KG Newman, Mara Lee Grayson, Mark Seidl, Kakie Pate, Jessica Hudson, Marc Frazier and Lance Le Gyrs; creative nonfiction by Amy Bowers, and much more.