Find the latest news from literary and alternative magazines including new issues, editorial openings, and much more.
Radar Poetry 30 is here! Featuring poetry by Lisa Creech Bledsoe, Brendan Constantine, Jason B. Crawford, Ja’net Danielo, Ann DeVilbiss, Sheila Dong, David Donna, Margaret Draft, Amy Dryansky, William Fargason, Robert Krut, Romana Iorga, Amy Lerman, Carolyn Oliver, Justin Rigamonti, and more.
June’s Plume featured selection is “Jen Sperry Steinorth: On Creating and Claiming Space with Her Read” by Amanda Newell. Jane Zwart reviews Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs. In nonfiction: “The Solid Objects of Stagnant Empires” by Irina Mashinski.
In this issue, find poetry by contest winners Saleem Hue Penny and Eileen Elizabeth Waggoner, as well as Stephanie Berger, Joanne Godley, Haolun Xu, Kwame Dawes, Chelsea Bunn, Kai Coggin, Pooja Mittal Biswas, and more; fiction contest winners Galen Schram and Benjamin Kessler as well as James Prier, Douglas Fenn Wilson, Jacob R. Weber, Emily Saso, Hadley Leggett, Moshe Zvi Marvit, and David Allan Cates. Read more at the Bellevue Literary Review website.
The latest issue of The 2River View, Summer 2021, is out with poems by Ted Kooser, Matthew Freeman, Will Harmon, Sheree La Puma, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Matthew Murrey, Benjamin Nash, Karen June Olson, Charles Rafferty, SM Stubbs, Diane Thiel, and Sally Van Doren.
Back in October of 2020, we let you know that Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing was launching online literary magazine Good River Review in 2021. Well, the first issue has officially launched!
The first issue features prose by Rigoberto González, Pico Iyer, Brian Leung, Chris Offutt, and Julie Ann Stewart; lyric by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Alan Chazaro, Molly Peacock, Charlotte Pence, J.D. Schraffenberger, Evie Shockley, Katerina Stoykova, and Claire Wahmanholm; and drama by Ifa Bayeza and Kia Corthron.
They also feature book reviews of Dinty W. Moore’s To Hell with It: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante’s Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno; Zadie Smith’s Intimations; and Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth. Under “The Practice of Writing” heading, they feature an excerpt of Felicia Rose Chavez’s Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom.
You will also find interviews with Keven Willmott, Lydia Millet, and Pico Iyer.
Between their biannual issues, they will regularly feature book reviews, interviews, and essays on the practice of writing, along with other important literary news. Swing by their listing on NewPages to learn more and don’t forget to read their inaugural issue!
Their submissions period is open and ongoing and they do accept work written for children and young adults, too! Since they love work that doesn’t fit neatly into genre categories, that is why they publish work under the headings of prose, drama, and lyric.
In the table of contents of Arts & Letters latest issue, the heading “Unclassifiable” caught my eye, promising a walk off the beaten path. This section features the winner of the journal’s annual Unclassifiable Contest.
When I paged to this winning piece—”Voidopolis” by Kat Mustatea—I was greeted with a series of photos with accompanying text. This excerpt is from a project Mustatea began on an Instagram page, loosely retelling Dante’s Inferno. Throughout this 46-part series, Mustatea never uses words with the letter “E.” This combined with the format of the photo-sharing app gave me a burst of inspiration to try new things and to challenge myself while doing it.
There is just enough included in the issue to hook the reader along and lead them to check out the rest of the story on Mustatea’s Instagram. The project has ended, so there’s no wait for new readers to reach the conclusion. Step away from the usual, the classifiable, and check out this piece in the Spring 2021 issue of Arts & Letters.
In this issue of Sou’wester, find fiction by Karin Aurino, Joe Baumann, Matthew Bruce, Bryana Fern, Rachel Furey, Justin Herrmann, Siew David Hii, Mehdi M. Kashani, Kate LaDew, Nathan Alling Long, Lope López de Miguel, Fejiro Okifo, R.S. Powers, Katie Jean Shinkle, Noel Sloboda, RaShell R. Smith-Spears, Samantah Steiner, Matthew Sullivan, and Tina Tocco; and nonfiction by Martha Phelan Hayes, Louise Krug, and Cynthia Singerman.
Sleet Magazine‘s Slim Summer Edition is now live! The editors reveal gut-wrenching new poetry by Jim Moore and Michael Kleber-Diggs. Sleet features life and death CNF from Margaret Bell and Dr. Alexander Gong, as well as sparkling fiction by Euan Currie, Scott Gardner and Erin Winseman. This edition is not to be missed!
The Summer 2021 issue of Rattle features a tribute to Appalachian Poets. The 22 poets in this special section write about family, history, and modern life. The tribute section was so good, we had to stretch the issue to 124 pages to fit it all in. In the open section, the poems are as strong as ever, featuring reader favorites Francesca Bell and Ted Kooser, along with several excellent poets new to Rattle’s pages, writing about everything from sexual desire to cancer, big foot to peeing in the pool, including a long poem from Clemonce Heard on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre.
2020 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize Winners, a conversation with Camille T. Dungy, Kate McIntyre on the progeny of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, arts features about punk’s influence on contemporary art and the Great British Teddy Girls. Read more at The Missouri Review website.
EVENT’s latest Non-Fiction Contest Issue is here, featuring the three 2020 winning essays, and an exciting assortment of poetry, fiction and reviews to keep you entertained. Work by Alexis Pooley, Madeline Sonik, Adrienne Gruber, David Zieroth, Malgosia Halliop, David Ishaya Osu, James Pollock, Jade Riordan, and more. Read more at the EVENT website.
The latest issue of THEMA explores the theme: The Tiny Red Suitcase. Work by Madonna Christensen, Cathy Bryant, Stuart Jay Silverman, Lynda Fox, Jesse Doiron, Rayna Bright, Sivakami Velliangiri, and more.
The Spring 2021 issue features the Winners of the 2021 Open Season Awards: Matthew Hollett, Zilla Jones, and Tanis MacDonald. Poetry by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin, Leslie Joy Ahenda, Manahil Bandukwala, Sophie Crocker, Kari Teicher, Tia Paul-Louis, Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, Hussain Ahmed.
The June issue of The Lake is now online featuring Estaban Allard-Valdivieso, Georgi Bailey, Daisy Bassen, Sylvia Freeman, Neil Fulwood, Margaret Galvin, Maren O. Mitchell, Fiona Sinclair, J. R. Solonche, Richard Allen Taylor, Damaris West, Sarah White, Rodney Wood.
The Spring 2021 edition of Boulevard is now available with winning poems from the 2020 Poetry Contest by Bryan Byrdlong, the winning essay from the 2020 Nonfiction Contest by Jonathan Wei, and a craft interview with Emily St. John Mandel. New poetry by Adrian Matejka, Adedayo Agarau, JD Amick, Clare Banks, Lory Bedikian, Ava C. Cipri, Laura Davenport, Kwame Dawes, Rosalind Guy, Rachael Hershon, Lisa Low, Jane Morton, and more.
In this issue of South Dakota Review, poetry by Jan Beatty, Luisa A. Igloria, Matthew Thorburn, Shira Dentz, Sarah Bate, Caroline Goodwin, Christine Stewart-Nuñez, Brenna M. Casey, Kristel Rietesel-Low, Clay Matthews, Sonia Greenfield, and Cate Peebles; and more.
We’re excited to share a new issue of Hippocampus Magazine with you. The May-June 2021 was released last week and is now at the Mag Stand. Inside, you’ll find work by Brian Benson, Rachel Bunting, K.B. Carle, Chapin Cimino, Hailey Rose Hanks, Stuart Horwitz, Gwen L. Martin, Stephanie Parent, Abigail Rose, Paul Rousseau, Kate Sheridan, Claire Sicherman, and SJ Sindu.
This issue features fiction by Jim Barnes, James Robert Campbell, Jonathan Lindberg, Elizabeth Cummins Muñoz, and Clay Reynolds; nonfiction by Robert Kostuck, Shelley Pernot, and Christopher Thornton; and more. Read more at the Concho River Review website.
The Arts & Letters Spring Issue is now available for purchase! This issue features the 2020 Unclassifiable Prize winner. Fiction by Stephanie Gangi, Noley Reid, Simone Martel, and Kent Kosack; flash by Dan Kennedy and Matt Greene, and more.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
In Volume 33 of The Briar Cliff Review, readers can find a poem that I think most people can relate to after the past year. “Gargoyles” by Sara Wallace describes the empty of feeling of craving someone else’s touch. While the poem does lean toward the romantic side of touch (“No one’s biting your lips, / no one’s tasting you.), it comes at a time when I’m seeing my friends celebrate the ability to hug their loved ones again after, and ends up feeling more general. After being separated from friends and family during the pandemic, who hasn’t missed the intimacy of touch?
Wallace carries the idea of gargoyles through the poem, first as a smoker standing in a doorway of a bodega, and finally as the game “statues, / how when you were tagged // you had to pretend you were stone,” and could only move again when “someone touched you.” I love this thread she carries through from present to past, keeping with that yearning for physical touch.
“Gargoyles” by Sara Wallace. The Briar Cliff Review, 2021.
This month’s Plume featured selection is “Five Contemporary Love Songs edited by Leeya Mehta,” with work by five contemporary Indian poets: Tishani Doshi, Rajiv Mohabir, Jerry Pinto, Arundhathi Subramaniam, and Jeet Thayil. Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Music for the Dead and Resurrected by Valzhyna Mort. In nonfiction: “The Mind’s Meander: Indirection, Ambiguity, and Association in Poetry” by Rachel Hadas.
Welcome to our second pandemic issue of Hiram Poetry Review. The poems here have one thing in common—we liked them immediately. Work by David Adams, Anthony Aguero, Fred Arroyo, Zulfa Arshad, Enne Baker, Grace Bauer, Demetrius Buckley, Jim Daniels, Edmund Dempsey, Norah Esty, Jess Falkenhagen, Antony Fangary, and more.
A special portfolio of work from Morocco, featuring stories translated from Arabic, and art from the Hindiyeh Museum of Art. Essays on family in India and nature in England, new fiction from Celeste Mohammed and Emma Sloley, and poetry by Peter Filkins, Denise Duhamel, Aleksandar Hemon, and Jose Hernandez Diaz.
In this issue of Cimarron Review: poetry by Ken Autrey, Martha Silano, Sandra McPherson, Daniel Bourne, Erin McIntosh, George Bilgere, Annie Christian, Rebecca Cross, Chloe Hanson, Austen Leah Rose, Millie Tullis, Avra Wing, Amy Bagan, and more; fiction by Jason K. Friedman, Laura Dzubay, David Philip Mullins, and Ashley Clarke; and nonfiction by Brenna Womer, Andrew Johnson, and Lindsay Shen.
Our new issue, ANMLY #32, features a special folio Neighbor Species and Shared Futures curated by Kristine Ong Muslim. Featuring work in various genres from Tilde Acuña, Richard Calayeg Cornelio, Reil Benedict Obinque, Regine Cabato, Pedantic Pedestrians, Melvin Clemente Magsanoc, and more. See what else you can expect to find in this issue at the Anomaly website.
The Spring 2021 issue features Postscript to a Postscript: an interview with Bill Glose, Winner of the 2020 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, interviewed by M. Scott Douglass. Fiction by Abe Aamidor, Allison Daniel, Tony Hozeny, Michele Lovell, Bob Moskowitz, Robert Stone and poetry by Bill Glose, Joan Bauer, Frederick W. Bassett, Joan Bernard, Burt Beckmann, Ace Boggess, Marion Starling Boyer, and more.
Featuring the Robert Watson Literary Prize-winning story, Casey Guerin’s “What Consumes You,” and the Prize-winning poem, Chelsea Harlan’s “Some Sunlight.” Issue 109 also includes an Editor’s Note by Terry L. Kennedy and new work from Rachel Abramowitz, Allyn Bernkopf, and more. Read more at The Greensboro Review website.
The May/June 2021 issue of the Kenyon Review is now available. This issue features stories by María José Candela, Gina Chung, Maureen Langloss, and Katherine Sharpe; and essays by Sophie Beck, Jonathan Gleason, and Amit Majmudar.
The Spring 2021 issue features short stories by and interviews with Sydney Rende, Sam White, Kimm Brockett Stammen, and Caroline Kim. New poetry by Michael Quinn, Ruth Baumann, Will Thomas, and Mureall Hebert and nonfiction by Jory Pomeranz and Christie Tate. Prose & Poetry Contest winners: Mona’a Malik, Ryan Little, and Alisha Acquaye. Read more at the Carve website.
In this issue of The Briar Cliff Review, find poetry by John Blair, Simon Perchik, Twyla M. Hansen, Julie L. Moore, Tony Tracy, Dante Di Stefano, Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Ann Hudson, Michael Hill, Jimmie Cumbie, Alyse Knorr, and more.
The May 2021 issue of Poetry features work by Ashlee Haze, Emily Gallacher Viall, Imru Al-Qays, Rebecca Foust, Rachel Jamison Webster, Tarik Dobbs, Courtney Faye Taylor, Rosemary Catacalos, Casey Thayer, and more.
The May issue of The Lake is now online featuring Johanna Boal, Claire Booker, Robert Cooperman, Jenny Hockey, Toby Jackson, Jacqueline Jules, and Rose Lennard.
Issue #19 of Into the Void is by far our biggest issue yet! Containing 12 fiction pieces, 3 creative nonfiction pieces, 15 poems, and 11 beautiful art pieces, Issue #19 is vast, vivid and vibrant. Fiction by Sean Cunningham, Laurel Doud, Mark Foss, Jones Irwin, Chris Neilan, and more.
We’re all masked up and ready to roll out our latest issue! Poetry, videos, music, a dog with a frisbee, Nobel Laureate, art work, photography. Poetry from Anne Pierson Wiese, Tim Suermondt, Samantha DeFlitch, Dawn Potter, Ralph Savarese. See what else is in this issue of Hole In The Head Review.
This milestone issue features some of our favorite prizewinning essays. These curious, beautiful, nuanced stories about everything from surviving lightning strikes to the relief of solving medical mysteries consider the many perils, as well as the tremendous power, of living in a body. See what else the issue has in store for you at the Creative Nonfiction website.
With Issue #37 of The Adroit Journal, we celebrate the extraordinary work of our Gregory Djanikian Scholars—six poets with immense talent who have yet to publish a full-length collection (hello, poetry presses!): Jari Bradley, Donte Collins, Jane Huffman, L. A. Johnson, Nastasha Rao and Brandon Thurman.
“Geographies of Justice,” edited by Alexis Lathem with Richard Cambridge and Charles Coe. An extraordinary testament to extraordinary times: includes poetry from Susan Deer Cloud, Tammy Melody Gomez, Richard Hoffmann, Jacqueline Johnson, Petra Kuppers, and Danielle Wolffe; nonfiction from Teow Lim Goh, Andréana Elise Lefton, David Mura, Nicole Walker, and Catherine Young. Find more contributors at the About Place Journal website.
Guest Post by Adrian Thomson.
Jesse Lee Kercheval’s “The Boy Who Drew Cats” speaks both to our current time and to the necessity of human myth. Confined to a house in Uruguay as her children face quarantine in Japan, Kercheval connects to the hero of a Japanese fable, the titular drawer of cats, in an attempt to find solace within herself through her own artistic ventures.
This connection to cultural myth—and Kercheval does cement her own tale very concretely to the modern as well as the mythical—inspires the author in its assertions of safety, balance, and a sense of stability. The myth helps her recapture her own love of art and facilitates a return to the page where flowers transform into felines. Kercheval does not uphold the myth as a perfect guideline, either—she comments upon it, accepting the good she sees there while acknowledging elements she appears to dislike.
But her inclusion of the fable also speaks to the wider purpose of human myth—as a necessity of the imagination to allow us to “visit” faraway places and to inspire. Kercheval places both within the story to generate trust that the world will get better, as well as trust in her own abilities.
“The Boy Who Drew Cats” by Jesse Lee Kercheval. Brevity, January 2021.
Reviewer bio: Adrian Thomson is a graduate student at Utah State University, currently working toward his MS by way of a thesis in poetry.
Our theme for this issue is LOVE in all its painful, confusing, passionate, and joyous diversity. Featuring fiction by Louise Blalock, Margaret Emma Brandl, Ed Davis, Stefan Kiesbye, and Nick Sweeney; memoir by Jane Boch, Ruth Askew Brelsford, Laura Foxworthy, and Carmela Delia Lanza; and poetry and prose poems by Leonore Hildebrandt, Robert Murray, and Jacalyn Shelley.
This issue features the winners of the Flash Fiction & Geri Digiorno Contests. New flash fiction from Frank X. Christmas, Andrea Eberly, Amina Gautier, Katherine Hubbard, Alana Reynolds, and Nicholas A. White. New poetry by Julia C. Alter, Melissa Boston, Jessica Dionne, Chelsea Harlan, and more. Find more contributors at the Raleigh Review website.
The MacGuffin’s Vol. 37.1 comes at you with an expanded selection of poetry and expanded coverage of our Poet Hunt contest(s) too! We start with Matthew Olzmann’s selections from Poet Hunt 25: Vivian Shipley’s grand prize winning “No Rehearsal” and honorable mention selections from Rita Schweiss and John Jeffire.
Find the 2021 Dogwood Award Winners in this issue. Also featuring work by Padya Paramita, Ellen Graf, Sheree La Puma, Christine Chen, Anne Hampford, Vanessa Haley, S.M. Ellis, Willie Lin, Cristina Baptista, Emily Polk, and more. Read more at the Dogwood website.
Special to this issue of The Bitter Oleander: The Central New York poet Paul B. Roth in dialogue with John Taylor, with a selection of his poetry included. Also in this issue: fiction by William Nuth, Marilee Dahlman, and more; poetry by Andrea Inglese, Patty Pieczka, Lake Angela, Pedro Serrano, Silvia Scheibli, Fabio Pusterla, and more.
Our spring issue features poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction by Cezarija Abartis, Bryana Atkinson, Robert Erle Barham, Melinda Brasher, Laura Todd Carns, Charlie Clark, and more. See a full contributor list at the Mag Stand.
Featuring new fiction by Michael Beadle and Mary Gulino, an essay by Carl Schiffman, and poetry by Linda K. Sienkiewicz, Giovanni Raboni (translated from the Italian by Zack Rogow), Joseph Fasano, James P. Cooper, Katherine Fallon, Barbara Daniels, and Mark Belair. Cover painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. More info at the Apple Valley Review website.
Guest Post by Madeline Thomas.
When a combination of a Catholic upbringing and the unforgettable viewing of a commercial for The Exorcist sends a young girl’s mind to the inevitability of a personal demon possession, the first steps are taken on a path to parental disappointment. Jessica Power Braun’s “Black Alpaca” places readers at the intersection of religion, generational conflict, and closet-Jesus nightmares with sharp humor and unflinching honesty.
The essay, published in Hippocampus Magazine, works through the realities of fear and guilt in the Catholic Church, the slow movement away from your family’s religious identity, and the discovery of a poignant black alpaca painting in the context of Braun’s identities as a mother, wife, and daughter. Humor forms the heart of the piece, but the essay makes no attempt to pull away from what is both painful and real—forming a balance that cultivates both emotional impact and investment for readers.
In a time where I feel the need for constant breaks from the mire of news and the world in general, the humor and tone present in “Black Alpaca” provides needed relief. Braun utilizes her power in storytelling to craft something worth connecting with.
“Black Alpaca” by Jessica Power Braun. Hippocampus Magazine, January 2021.
Reviewer bio: Madeline Thomas is a graduate student and writer at Utah State University.
World Literature Today’s spring issue, “Redreaming Dreamland,” gathers the work of 21 writers and artists reflecting on the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, including Patricia Smith, Joy Harjo, Jewell Parker Rhodes, and Tracy K. Smith. Additional highlights in the issue include a special section on Chinese migrant workers’ literature; an essay on how Giannina Braschi’s work keeps “popping up” in pop culture; fiction from Belarus and Iraq; plus reviews of new books by Najwan Darwish, Cixin Liu, Olga Tokarczuk, and dozens more.
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 16th 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 80,000 readers in 145 countries already know; the finest new writing is here, at your fingertips.
We have a gorgeous spring issue of Months To Years for readers. Thirty-two writers, poets, photographers, and artists have entrusted us with the privilege of sharing their creative work with the world.
In an extraordinary year, writers grapple with current changes and more long-lived concerns and relationships. The works demonstrate profound attention and the fine application of language to lived experience, quotidian and extraordinary. Read more at the Mom Egg Review website.