Find the latest news from literary and alternative magazines including new issues, editorial openings, and much more.
New this month on Terrain.org, find nonfiction by Sharon Dolin, Cara Stoddard, and Rachel Findlay; fiction by Michael McGuire and John Colman Wood; and poetry by Lex Runciman. Currently featured on the website: the winner of the Terrain.org 10th Annual Contest in Poetry are three poems by Stacey Balkun.
The newest issue of Mudfish features the winner of the 14th Mudfish Poetry Prize, judged by John Yau: Mark Wagenaar with “Fluencies.” Honorable mentions G. Hanlon and Stokes Howell are also included. Other contributors this issue: Dell Lemmon, Michael Lyle, Aillie McKeever, Beth Suter, Claire Scott, Vincent Bell, Marjorie Power, Angela Dribben, Yuyutsu Sharma, Holly Day, Jason Koo, James Trask, Jake Bauer, Francis Klein, Neal Zirn, Bob Coles, A. Kaiser, Kristin Entler, Tim Nolan, Kirk Wilson, Toni Hanner, and many more.
Inside our “Liberation” issue, First fiction from Thea Chacamaty and Bradley Babendir on Jewish comic novelists. Featuring Heather Christle, Samantha DeFlitch, Patricia Foster, Catherine Gammon, Terrance Manning Jr., Askold Melnyczuk, John R. Nelson, Anya Silver, and Paul Smith.
The “Atention!” issue of The Antioch Review includes Heinrich Böll’s “Cause of Death: Hooked Nose” (translated by Robert C. Conard) which captures Nobel laureate Boll’s vivid imagery about the corollary of unfettered hatred, unchallenged propaganda, and fearful inertia for countries, communities, and consciences. Rachel Rose’s “Buccal Swab” airs the concerns and realities families face when a member harmlessly hands over DNA to Ancestry.com or some other DNAanalyses company. Stuart Neville’s thriller “Coming in on Time” unfolds in the eyes of a child naïve to passions that stir so strongly and sting so seriously. Find a full list of contributors at The Antioch Review‘s website.
The single-author True Story has released a new issue. In “Plume: An Investigation” by Mary Heather Noble, a former environmental investigator applies her forensic skills to a family mystery. What happens to us when we are exposed to toxicity, both literally and figuratively? Can we change what we pass on to our kids? And at what cost?
Plume‘s February 2020 issue features selection is “Engraved Phrases on Open Seas: Poems and Notes on Translations of Khal Torabully” by Nancy Naomi Carlson. Charles Simic pens an “Essay on the Prose Poem,” and Mark Wagenaar reviews Mark Irwin’s Shimmer. Poets in this issue include Sawnie Morris, William Logan, Mary Jo Salter, Mark Irwin, Kim Addonizio, Andrea Cohen, Adam Scheffler, and more.
The Main Street Rag Winter 2020 issue includes featured interview “Living for the Day” with Laura Thurston by Richard Allen Taylor. Also in this issue, find fiction by Nancy Bourne, Michael Gaspeny, Nick Gardner, Don Stoll, Laurence Levey, and Michael Washburn; poetry by Joan Bauer, Ace Boggess, Les Brown, Brian Fanelli, Mary Alice Dixon, Sean Thomas Doherty, Vicki Mandel-King, Gerard Sarnat, Sibani Sen, Young Smith, and more; plus a selection of five book reviews.
This year’s issue of HSPR is a collection of small things–the way the small things, the things we could almost overlook, often drive art as much as larger considerations. Our 4×4 section this year continues the theme – Richard Kenney, Tobi Kassim, Jessica Fisher and Stephanie Burt all weigh in on the role of small things in both making poems and appreciating them. Contributors include Jena Le, Sandra Lim, KE Duffin, Mary Cisper, Anna Tomlinson, Adam Tavel, Jonathan Wike, Tobi Kassim, and more. A changed logo, different paper, and new fonts are also small physical changes readers can note in this issue.
The Winter 2020 issue of Carve Magazine features short stories by and interviews with Alissa Hattman, Emily Howorth, Sam Simas, and Kate Arden McMullen; poetry by Lucia Orellana Damacela, Jessica Hincapie, Cindy Juyoung Ok, and E. Kristin Anderson; and nonfiction by Brittany Coppla and Joel Clotharp. Additional features include Decline/Accept with “Fit” by Rayne Ayers-Debsksi, a “One to Watch” interview with Brandon Taylor by Anna Zumbahlen, and illustrations by Justin Burks.
The Poetry February 2020 issue features work by Zach Linge, Jesus Govea, and Dasiy Fried. More work by Terese Svoboda, Alison C. Rollins, Mia You, Caoilinn Hughes, Virginia Keane, Francine J. Harris, Angela Jackson, Rodney Jones, David Felix, Dujie That, Talin Tahajian, Partridge Boswell, Lani O’Hanlon, Beth Bachmann, John Lee Clark, Maggie Smith, James McCorkle, Zeina Hashem Beck, Jessica Greenbaum, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Mary B. Moore, Gabrielle Bates, Nome Emeka Patrick, Jack Underwood, and Liz Berry. Plus, an essay by Jeffrey Yang.
The Winter 2019 issue of The Malahat Review features 2019 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize winner Jeanette Lynes. Also included: Carolyn Nakagawa, Julia Brush, Angélique Lalonde, Franco Cortese, Kurt Marti, Patricia Young, Sherine Elbanhawy, Suphil Lee Park, Emeka Patrick Nome, Hasan Alizadeh, Conor Kerr, Joel Robert Ferguson, Melanie Boyd, Bernadette White, Dominique Béchard, Jon Gingerich, Tatiana Oroño, Robert Hilles, Kulbir Saran, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, Dawn Lo, and Sehrish Ranjha. Cover art by Sandra de Groot.
The “Granary” issue of The Literary Review features poetry by Rosa Alcalá, Mario Ariza, Christian Barter, Samuel Cheney, James Ciano, Heather Derr-Smith, Dalton Day, Michael Farman, Stuart Friebert, Ute von Funcke, Elisa Gonzalez, Benjamin S. Grossberg, Jennifer Grotz, Maricela Guerrero, Hannah Jansen, and more; fiction by Jody Azzouni, James Braziel, Rosy Fitzgerald, Case Q. Kerns, Laura Shaine, Christine Sneed, Eva Taylor, and Jenny Wu; and prose by Kelly Luce, Karen Luper, Toni Maraini, and Josip Novakovich.
This week, we have The Lake‘s February issue, featuring Gaby Bedetti, David Butler, Brent Cantwell, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Michael Dureck, Rebecca Gethin, David Krausman, Patrick Lodge, Bree A. Rolfe, Laura Stringfellow. Reviews of Jason Eng Hun Lee’s Beds in the East and Patrick Lodge’s Remarkable Occurrences.
The January 2020 issue features flash fiction by David Galef, Martha Keller, Ron Hartley, Luke Rolfes, Kenneth Hinegardner, Michael Clark, Meg Pokrass, Marie Anderson, Roberta Beary, Robert Pope, Warren L Jones III, and David C. Metz.
The Adroit Journal Issue 31 is here with new poetry by Victoria Chang, Michael Bazzett, Bruce Snider, Mark Halliday, Paul Guest, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Faylita Hicks, Caroline Crew, Paige Quiñones, Abby E. Murray, Natalie Eilbert, and more; prose by Kate Folk, Pete Segall, Alexander Weinstein, Alex Perez, Wendy Oleson, and John Elizabeth Stinzi; and art by Heather Betts, Jenny Shi, Anna Frankl, Niya Gao, You Young Kim, and Serge Gay Jr. Plus five new interviews with Victoria Chang, Danez Smith, Paige Lewis, Corrie Williamson, and Carmen Maria Machado.
Magazine Review by Makenzie Vance
In the Issue 8 of The Common, Sarah Smarsh describes how her grandfather’s home became a central gathering place for friends and family and then how it was lost after his death. She begins two generations before her own and skillfully condenses her three-generational story into a compelling length.
Smarsh recounts how her drifter grandmother met her grandfather and finally settled down after a life of wandering with her teenage child—Smarsh’s mother. Though the farmhouse served as a communal space for family and friends and a home for eccentric farm traditions like sledding in a canoe behind a truck, the farm fell apart when her grandfather died, leaving a hole in their lives.
Smarsh speaks to all when she illustrates the importance of a central gathering place for a community, and she reaffirms the importance of small farms and the lives lived upon them.
About the reviewer: Makenzie Vance is a creative writing student at Utah State University.
Literary magazine The Iowa Review hosts the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans. This writing contest is open to U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel. Writing can be in any genre and on any subject.
This year’s contest opens on May 1 and will be judged by Reginald McKnight, author of He Sleeps. The deadline to enter is May 31. First place receives $1,000 and publication in a forthcoming issue of Iowa Review. Second place receives $750 and three runners-up receive $500 each. Check out their site for full guidelines.
You can see the winners of the 2018 contest here: iowareview.org/blog/winners-fourth-veterans’-writing-contest. The 2018 winners were featured in the Spring 2019 issue.
This contest is made possible by a gift from the family of Jeff Sharlet (1942-69), a Vietnam veteran and antiwar writer and activist.
The Winter 2019 issue of Southern Humanities Review is out. In the issue: nonfiction by Lia Greenwell and Leslie Stainton; fiction by Erin Blue Burke, Dounia Choukri, Sayantani Dasgupta, and Alex Pickett; and poetry by J. Scott Brownlee, Sarah Edwards, Jared Harél, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Matthew Landrum, Donna J. Gelagotis Lee, Rodney Terich Leonard, A.T. McWilliams, Michelle Peñaloza, and Supritha Rajan. Plus, cover art by Martha Park.
The latest issue of The Iowa Review is out. In this issue: toes, 362.28 in the card catalog, a portfolio of fantastical and surreal writing and artwork, a tenure review gone awry, and the winners of the 2019 Iowa Review Awards. Contributors include Julie Gray, Derby Maxwell, Elizabeth Dodd, Andes Hruby, and Laura Crossett in nonfiction; Joyelle McSweeney, Brian Sneeden, Philip Metres, Maggie Millner, and Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer in poetry; and Chloe Wilson, Sherry Kramer, Terrence Holt, Analia Villagra, and Bruce Holbert in fiction.
Issue 10 of Gris-Gris features fiction by Peter Grandbois, James Hartman, Marlene Olin, and Betty Martin; poetry by Stephanie Brooks, Jonathan Riccio, Sarah Sousa, Hannah Warren, Maria Zoccola, and Daphne Simeon; nonfiction by Robert Vivian; and artwork by Desire’ Johnson.
The Autumn 2019 issue of The Gettysburg Review features a selection of paintings by Anne Siems; fiction by Cody Harrison, Gary Amdahl, and Kathryn Harlan; essays by Valerie Sayers, Geoff Wyss, and Floyd Collins; poetry by Gregory Fraser, Robert Gibb, Adam Tavel, G. C. Waldrep, Connor Yeck, Kathryn Nuernberger, Alison Pelegrin, Todd Davis, Alice Friman, Nancy Carol Moody, Edward Mayes, Averill Curdy, Joyce Sutphen, Sarah Kain Gutowski, and Stanley Plumly.
In the latest issue of Chinese Literature Today, find a special feature on Twenty-First Century Chinese Theater with work by Liu Hongtao, Zhang Xian, Li Jing (including an interview with Li Jing by Liu Hongtao), Zhai Yueqin, Ding Luonan, Chen Jide, and Song Baozhen. Also in this tenth anniversary issue: a tribute to Jin Yong with work by Liu Hongtao, Paul B. Foster, and Weijie Song; work by Xiao Fuxing; and featured scholar Charles A. Laughlin.
Magazine Review by Andrea Diamond
Ellen Hinsey and Jakob Ziguras were invited to assist the New England Review in compiling a collection of poems written by previously untranslated Polish authors in a special issue titled “Polish Poetry in Translation: Bridging the Frontiers of Language” (Volume 40 Number 2, 2019). No doubt, Ellen Hinsey, who had previously used love as her guide to identify works to include in her book Scattering the Dark: An Anthology of Polish Women Poets, was chosen for her care and attention.
The introduction to Hinsey’s anthology is referenced in an editor’s note in this issue and highlights difficulties that translation presents. Hinsey describes how even best efforts are often unable to fully create expressions and understandings in English that exist uniquely in Polish (and other languages) while also preserving beauty in the verses. Continue reading “New England Review – Polish Poetry in Translation”
Walloon Writers Review edition 6 is a collection of poetry, short stories and nature photography inspired by Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. This independent regionally focused literary magazine is published annually. “Edition 6” edited by Associate Editor Glen Young, is so titled as this is our first digital edition. Walloon Writers Review edition 6 is available on issuu and the link can be found on our website. No charge for the digital edition this year. Cover photography by Elizabeth J. Bates.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Mary Birnbaum’s nonfiction piece “Owosso” caught my eye in the latest issue of Crazyhorse, not only because it’s the winner of the Crazyhorse Nonfiction Prize, but because it’s a familiar name (though a surprise to see in a national literary journal); the tiny town in Michigan is a mere hour away from where I’ve lived my whole life. It’s also where Birnbaum’s grandfather lived, she learns as she reads his obituary at the gym. This discovery leads her on an exploration of the concept of ghosts and hauntings.
Across the country, Birnbaum writes of the ghostly characters of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and personal ghost stories shared by two friends. This leads her to look at the ghosts of her own life. These are not supernatural beings haunting the darkness, but are her father and her grandfather, two strangers removed from her life.
Birnbaum’s thoughts about her father and grandfather are complex and complicated. She breaks her ideas apart into small chunks, making them easily digestible as she bounces back and forth between ghost stories, the “what-ifs” of finding and confronting her father, and her discovery at the gym. At one point she wonders, “if it’s worse to be a ghost or to be haunted. I wonder if both are possible in me,” leading me to consider the ways in which I myself am a ghost or am being haunted in my own life.
As the essay wraps up, Birnbaum decides to label Owosso a mythical location. But while the small city is something separated from herself, it did conjure up from the shadows a tiny, welcomed connection between writer and this reader.
Magazine Review by Shaun Anderson
Alyssa Quinn’s “Transcendence: A Schematic”—Meridian Editors’ Prize 2019 winner—explores her efforts to process the loss of her brother. Weaving together a pilgrimage to Walden Pond, her memories of her brother, and her own beliefs and doubts, Quinn probes the hollowed out spaces, searching for a truth she can hold in the absence of her brother.
The exploration of emptiness leads Quinn to consider the places others turn to for truth. She explores science, religion, and maps, searching for a space where she can find her brother. Even in form, Quinn demonstrates absence as she creates a schematic, seeking answers from figures that do not exist. As Quinn tries to present an answer to her questions about death, transcendence, and reality she can only state with absolute uncertainty, “Perhaps the center is just as elusive as the beyond; matter as problematic as spirit.” In death, Quinn’s brother has shattered Quinn’s understanding of reality.
While the essay pulses with the agony of living in an emptied reality, Quinn recognizes that even her writing has been reformed by the loss of her brother. Quinn must confront the fact that “Syntax cannot convey true absence—say ‘I miss him’ and there he is again—there is no language for loss, for such awful missing.” Her work plunges into the loss of her brother, and emerges with the knowledge that Quinn must create a space to hold her brother within her own words.
About the reviewer: Shaun Anderson is a creative writing student at Utah State University.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The Fall 2019 issue of the Missouri Review invites readers to wander away from the ordinary into a world that’s a little bit “off” in its feature. In “Dream Logic: The Art of Ten Contemporary Surrealists,”Kristine Somerville offers a brief history of the surrealist art movement.
While we learn the history, we also see full-color images of surreal artwork, including embroidered mixed media images by Robin McCarthy, clay sculptures by Ronit Baranga, collages by Rodriguez Calero, and more. Indeed, these all carry dreamlike qualities as they challenge our expectations. Each piece grabs the eye and forces it to take in new, creative perspectives. Baranga’s work features grotesque human features emerging from delicate teacups. Gensis Belanger’s work seems to showcase the ordinary until you blink and realize a stool is supported by four large cigarettes instead of regular legs, and the foot inside the sandal that rests on the stool is actually a hot dog. Whimsy and dream logic reign in this feature. The provided history grounds us, though, giving a clear lens through which we can examine the art.
Somerville closes with the reminder, “surrealism provides an outlet for creativity and spontaneity and an escape from the tyranny of the real.” Allow yourself to escape for a moment and wander into the dreams of the surreal artists found in the Fall 2019 issue.
Garth Greenwell interviewed by Ilya Kaminsky in The Paris Review.
I don’t know how much these distinctions exist for me. Certainly I think the conversation of art doesn’t care about them very much. I’ve always been turned off by a kind of assertive Americanism, and the American writers I love best, from Hawthorne and James and Baldwin to Alexander Chee and Yiyun Li, have all been cosmopolitan in their tastes and views. Of course, America is important to my writing—the landscape of the American South, the rhythms of American speech, the expansive, sometimes-redemptive, sometimes-toxic sense of American selfhood.
What it means to be American is one of the subjects of my books, as it is of any book about Americans abroad. Bulgaria is important to the books, too. I was speaking Bulgarian every day as I wrote What Belongs to You. Often enough, I spoke only Bulgarian. The rhythms of Bulgarian—the most beautiful, the most musical language in the world, so far as I’m concerned—are part of those sentences, as is the cityscape of Mladost, the quarter of Sofia where I lived, which I also think is very beautiful, though maybe with a difficult kind of beauty.
“The Devotions” issue features fiction by Sabirah Orah Mark, JoAnna Novak, Pablo Piñero Stillmann, Su-Yee Lin, Roger Topp, and more; nonfiction by Jenny Boully, Spencer Reece, Joan Connor, Tyler Mills, D. Gilson, and others; film by Will Stockton; art by Jochern Hendricks; Sabrina Orah Mark in conversation with Vi Khi Nao; and poetry by Peter Cooley, Endi Bogue Hartigan, Matthew Henriksen, Dujie That, Steffi Drewes, G.C. Waldrep, Antonia Pozzi, Owen McLeod, Bronwen Tate, Cary Stough, Sarah Destin, Alisha Dietzman, Christian Wessels, and more.
The Antioch Review Summer 2019 issue opens with postmodernist African-American painter and printmaker Emma Amos’ 1957 Antioch College senior paper about her education as an artist whose works are currently scheduled to go to the Smithsonian. Investigative reporter Jay Tuck’s “Mankind’s Greatest Challenge: Artificial Intelligence” is a well-founded call for caution in what has become the wild west of virtual reality. Mika Seifert’s “Old Timers” will send chills up your spine and “Coming in on Time” by Stuart Neville will have you reaching for tissues. Our poetry selection rounds out this issue that once again delivers the best words in the best order.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The Fall 2019 issue of Weber includes two poems by Bill Snyder: “Redundancy” and “Home.”
Snyder travels through time in these poems. In “Home,” he brings us to 1972 as he hitchhikes to his father’s house in Florida to surprise him with his arrival, and in “Redundancy,” he brings us to 1995 while he plays Scrabble with his mother.
Snyder writes with clarity, each poem rich with description that never bogs the message down. Each feels like a tiny short story, grabbing readers and pulling them into the scene. We are sitting at the table with his mother, “sunlight seeping in.” We are standing on the side of the road waiting in the humid air for a car to stop, “the sun behind a Burger King, Kentucky Fried, / all the rest.”
These poems are a pleasure to read, an intimate gaze at the familial bonds of Snyder’s speaker.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Each issue of Ruminate opens with “Readers’ Notes,” a response from a variety of readers/writers on the issue’s theme. This is one of my favorite parts of the issue—the little snippets of connection. The Winter 2019/20 theme is “Shelter,” and thirteen readers write in with their thoughts on the subject.
It’s interesting to see the variety of approaches writers take as they cover this topic. A few speak of physical structures that offer shelter. Benjamin Malay writes of an abandoned farmhouse found while hitchhiking; Duane L. Herrmann’s shelter is a screened-in porch during childhood; and Sharon Esterly writes of a DIY Cold War bomb shelter. Moving away from man-made structures, Rebecca Martin observes a child’s own body being their shelter; Liz Degregorio’s shelter is “the kindest lie” her father could tell her as a child; and Sarah Swandell’s shelter is a womb.
Each of these pieces is short and succinct. All grab attention and hold fast as readers unfold the layers that reveal the shelter within. The Readers’ Notes section serves as a great opener for Ruminate, both as a warm-up for the rest of the issue, and as a way to jog one’s own creativity, prompting consideration on how we too might briefly write on the given topic.
december‘s Fall/Winter 2019 issue features the winners and honorable mentions of the 2019 Curt Johnson Prose Award in Fiction and Nonfiction.
This year’s Award in Fiction was judged by Rita Mae Brown, and the Award in Nonfiction was judged by Amy Chua. Contest Editor Lauren Lederman introduces the winners, and readers can find a full list of finalists inside the issue.
2019 Curt Johnson Prose Award in Fiction
First Place
“The Land Behind the Fog” by Andrea Eberly
Honorable Mention
“The Augmentation Dilemma” by TN Eyer
2019 Curt Johnson Prose Award in Nonfiction
First Place
“Gumdrop Electric” by Sarah Treschl
Honorable Mention
“The One Who Didn’t Stay” by Samantha Rogers
Valley Voices brings readers a special edition on ekphrastic poetry with the Fall 2019 issue. Fifty-seven poems by forty-two poets follow the theme, and John J. Han pens the essay: “A Verbal Response to Visual Art: The popularity, Types, and Composition of Ekphrastic Poetry.”
Opening the issue is a sort of call and response between husband and wife duo Leo Touchet and Elizabeth Burk in “Louisiana: A Duet of Photographs and Poems.” Touchet’s photographs serve as inspiration for Burk’s poetry. After the selection, the two speak with Editor John Zheng about their work, both as individuals and as a creative pair.
Zheng introduces the issue with, “[ . . . ] ekphrastic expressions are not simple interpretations; they are, instead, reinterpretations that experiment with imagination, language, and synesthesia in the creative process of writing poetry.” Check out the creative experimentations in the Fall 2019 issue and let it inspire you to experiment with your own ekphrastic work.
Plume has hit quite a milestone this month. Their December 2019 issue is their 100th publication. As usual, they bring readers a fine selection of poems (some with audio recordings), a smattering of book reviews, and one essay. However, they stray from their usual format with their featured selection. While readers will normally find one poet interviewed with a selection of their poetry in this section, this month the staff has chosen to feature favorites selected from the past 100 issues.
These selections include: Rasha Abdulhadi (Issue 88), Angie Estes (Issue 46), Stephen Dobyns (Plume Anthology Number 7), Amy Beeder (Issue 67), Tom Sleigh (Issue 17), Justyna Bargielska translated from Polish by Benjamin Paloff (Issue 77), and Stephen Dunn (Issue 2).
If readers are feeling especially ambitious, they can find their own favorite poem among the full archive of all these past issues.
Stepping back in time to 1960s-Manhattan, author and former supernumerary actor with the New York City Opera Company (NYCO), Edward Hower reminisces of sharing the stage with the magnificent, world-renowned coloratura soprano, Beverly Sills in “Echoes.”
Readers, performers, and devout season ticket holders alike are presented with backstage passes to one of the most opulent, velvet-covered theaters in the world. Hower’s recollections are so detailed that we can smell the sweat seeping through the make-up, pantaloons, and Roman breastplates.
Through a tender, adoring lens, Hower observes how Sills’s pianissimos float through the air forever, with descents so dazzling that guests are left liquified. Questions of purpose and place are contemplated in between the echoes of scales and vibratos: whom to love and how to love them, refusing to give up by giving in, and to what ends one must sacrifice for the sake of maintaining their integrity. As audience members we too may feel, as Hower expresses, “the tremor of applause rising through us” as we seek triumphant courage amid the tyranny of doubt on the stages of our own lives.
Review by Camille Sleight-Price
After twenty-seven years, Jennifer Barber has left her position as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander. In the Summer 2019 issue, readers can find a portfolio, edited by Fred Marchant, dedicated to Barber’s work with Salamander over the years.
Location is a strong theme among these poems. Martha Collins writes of Santa Fe in “Passing,” flashes of scene and memory flitting by as she walks us through the streets; Valerie Duff sits at the titular “Fry’s Spring Filling Station” in Charlottesville, VA and thinks of the passage of time; Danielle Legros Georges lands in Cap-Haitien, Haiti in “Green Offering”; Yusef Komunyakaa quietly reflects on the train stop at Liberty Airport in Newark, NJ; and Gail Mazur considers hiking Ice Glen trails in Massachusetts, thoughts of romanticism and friendship drawing her there. If you’re unable to get out and travel this summer, take a mini literary vacation through this selection of Salamander.
Between those stops on the map are other great poems including “Selected Haiku for Jenny” by Maxine Hong Kingston, a set of three-lined stanzas that seem almost like a writing exercise to urge her to write, as it begins “There are days of no poems. / Not even 17 sounds will come.” And then later “Haiku master: ‘No need / for 17 syllables. [ . . . ] / Be free.” In “Recovery,” Jeffrey Harrison writes of a familiar feeling for me: the fear of breaking a favorite coffee cup. In one moment, he thinks he’s lost it, and in the next it’s still there, “its yellow somehow brighter,” better now that he’s felt its loss.
There are plenty more poems to check out in this portfolio, a fitting good-bye for Jennifer Barber and her dedicated work throughout the years.
Review by Katy Haas
The Chattahoochee Review Spring 2019 issue features the winners of the 2019 Lamar York Prize:
Winner for Fiction
Judge Kevin Wilson
“A Box of Photographs” by Peter Newall [pictured]
Winner for Nonfiction
Judge Adriana Páramo
“The Black Place” by Whitney Lawson
To read the judge’s commentary and see a full list of finalists, click here.
Entries for the Lamar York Prize are accepted from November 1 – January 31 of each year. In addition to publication, winners receive a prize of $1000.
Big Muddy has proven to be one of my most favorite journals to read. The topics of its many stories and poems speak to that downhome, simpler type of life, even if sometimes it may not be a positive image or experience for those involved.
Within its pages, you’ll find fiction, poetry, and essays that really make you think about life and the situations we find ourselves in. Most of the work and topics are directly related to the ten states bordering the Mississippi River, all the way from the U.S./Canada border to the Gulf Coast through Louisiana.
I always look forward to seeing what Plume Poetry is going to bring to the table with their Featured Selection each monthly issue. This month, they bring readers five poets under the age of thirty-five: Caroline Chavatel, E.G. Cunningham, Emma DePanise, Ella Flores, and Kimberly Grey. John A. Nieves briefly interviews the five as introduction to their respective two poems.
The latest issue of Southern Humanities Review features a set of four flash fictions by Judith Ortiz Cofer, a good sampling of the rest of the writing inside the issue: “My Mother Comes Back from the Dead,” “Eleven,” “Thirteen,” and “Sen-Sen.” Themes of family, self, and gender appear repeatedly in these four, posthumously published pieces, bound together by a common voice. I imagined the same narrator speaking throughout the pieces.
In her editor’s note to Runestone Journal Volume 4, Gretchen Marquette writes about the value of literature and its role in helping us better understand ourselves. Recent research has shown how fiction improves our understanding of the world around us as well as make sense of our own predicaments. Marquette goes on to express this as the power of all literature, and thus the responsibility of writers old and new to “show us the way forward in our private moments of despair.”
Works that ask: What is this? is what Leaping Clear values in its submissions. Artists and writers whose works are influenced by their involvement in meditative and contemplative practices will find a home here, as will readers who appreciate having a more interactive experience with what they read. Past issues included essay, fiction, music, video and photography, but this “Solstice” issue is focused solely on poetry and visual poetry.
The cover of SLICE Issue 23 is a confluence of great design choices, from the gorgeous, slightly menacing artwork of Teagan White to the title itself, which sits, top-trimmed, like a visual onomatopoeia. The cover is glossy, the text is bright and easy to read, and the issue is slim but still substantial. The magazine exudes a contagious confidence, a sense that this, here, is everything a lit mag should be.
The Fiddlehead is published four times a year, devoting its Summer 2018 issue to poetry and reviews of poetry collections. The out-going co-editor, Ross Leckie, in his editorial opener, lets readers know that the special summer issues are “larger than the regular issues,” and “have the feel of something like an annual anthology.” Divided into three thematic sections each presented with a line from one of the poems within as a title and a black and white copy of the cover art—Waning Summer Light, 2017 by Sonya Mahnic—the issue contains poems by thirty-four poets and is packed with memorable work to keep company with even in the coldest of winters.
Room, published out of Canada, continues to live by their tagline “literature, art and feminism since 1975.” Room has come a long way from the white, middleclass, lesbian pieces of the 1970s. Editor Leah Golob is proud to say in her Editor’s Letter how “the magazine has taken greater care to feature a more nuanced, inclusive, and intersectional approach to gender and sexuality.” This issue is dedicated to queer writers who are either women or genderqueer. Through fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art, this issue of Room proclaims queerness that is presented in bodies and in history, a queerness that is today and yesterday and always.
You don’t have to be an expert in Chinese literature to enjoy Chinese Literature Today (CLT). And though this issue is dedicated to Chinese science fiction, featuring science fiction writer Han Song, you don’t have to be an expert in science fiction either. CLT features fiction, poetry, and interviews, in addition to literary and film criticism all by Chinese or (for the first time) Chinese-American and Tibetan authors. Framed by introductory and contextual pieces such as “A Very Brief History of Chinese Science Fiction” by Wu Yan and Yao Jianbin, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, CLT provides readers with necessary background. All the same, be aware that a good portion of the journal is dedicated toward academic articles and scholarship rather then wholly fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.
The Winter 2019 issue of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices online is dedicated to reviews and interviews, from authors of a wide range of genres. Included in the issue are interviews with Ana Jelnikar, Genia Blum, Serina Gousby, Tenzin Dickie, Jennifer Martelli, and Adriana Páramo, and reviews of Then Again by Ben Berman, Bad Harvest by Dzvinia Orlowsky, Rewilding by January Gill O’Neil, The Raincoat Colors by Helena Minton.
Cover photography, in addition to a portfolio inside this issue, by Keith Flynn, which documents “the effects of the Great Recession on the individual lives of people living in Appalachia, within a 75 mile radius of Asheville, North Carolina.”
After twenty-six years as editor-in-chief of Salamander, Suffolk University’s literary journal, Jennifer Barber has announced she is “stepping down to pursue other projects.”
“The magazine will continue to be housed in and nourished by the Suffolk University English Department,” she assures readers. The spring/summer 2019 issue will be guest edited, and any further information about future issues will be announced in the fall issue.
Our best wishes to Jennifer as she embarks on her new live adventures!
Light and Dark Magazine’s name is also part of their mission: to publish work that displays both the light and the dark side of humanity. The online issues are bite-sized and easy to digest, providing just a few pieces to take in throughout the month until the next issue is published. The November 2018 issue features two new pieces of fiction—“You Do What You Have To” by James MacDonald and “Santa Madusa” by Siolo Thompson—and cover art by Abigail Bonnanzio.