NewPages Blog :: Magazines

It’s nearly impossible not to pick up this issue of Pebble Lake Review, with its almost hypnotically vibrant cover photograph of a sun-dappled graveyard. Fortunately, the contents of this slim, unassuming journal don’t disappoint. The poems tend to be short and straightforward; no experimental rambles here. Likewise, the fiction moves quickly, and there is a handful of various art works by seven different people. Continue reading “Pebble Lake Review – Fall 2004”

Notre Dame Review &Now, and Then is this issue’s theme, by which the editors mean: “a larger than-traditional conception of what counts as literature” based on the premise that “the world changes” and literature, like painting and music, will “reflect larger historical changes.” &Now plus and Then is/are literally one/two journals, the front cover of &Now becomes the back cover of and Then as halfway through one must flip the journal over and begin again to be reading right side up. &Now, the editors tell us, is a “festival of new writing” and somehow the word festival gives me permission to revel in these “larger than traditional” pieces with largesse. Continue reading “Notre Dame Review – Winter 2005”

At the heart of this issue is fine work from photojournalist Jill Krementz’s “Literary Encounters” series, featuring pairings of literary icons, including my favorite: Reynolds Price and Eudora Welty, grinning at each other from opposite sides of what appears to be a bed. Thanks to Virgil Suarez for the unforgettable thought of circus nuns “offering spiritual grounding” to the “alligator man, bearded lady,” and “boy who is all head” as they fall through the world with the smallest of ease. In David Wagoner’s “The Escaped Gorilla,” we see how much more poignant is the predicament of wildness when, out of weariness and at too far a remove from what it was meant to be to ever bridge the distance, it becomes complicit in our need to vanquish it: Continue reading “Ontario Review – Spring/Summer 2004”

Weighing in at two-hundred and eighty pages, this issue of the long-lived Passages North is a hefty journal not only in terms of the writers it publishes, but also just sheer size. That page count allows them the leeway to do what many literary journals cannot: publish a short series of poems by the same person so that it’s possible to gain a wider feel for the poet’s work. Bob Hicok and Jan Bailey, for example, enjoy a run of five poems each. The only complaint I had about the poetry is that there’s so much good stuff here, it’s difficult to focus on one poem or poet to the exclusion of the others. Continue reading “Passages North – Winter/Spring 2004”

This magazine is short and pleasant, about 150 pages. Within its covers, the reader will find stories, an interview, pictures, and lots of poetry. Many of the stories and poems in this issue seem to center around parent-child relationships. There are several Jewish stories and poems and a Latin American story. Another story focused on a young girl’s reaction to Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, filled with emotion and poignancy. Continue reading “The Saint Ann’s Reviews – Number 4”

Some lovely work here from Hawai’i and beyond, with an emphasis on poems about the natural world, although strong poems and stories consider other subject matter, as well. I was happy to be introduced to poets whose work I had not read before, above all, Joseph Stanton, professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Hawai’i in Manoa, whose poem “The Hospice Flocks of St. Francis” moves with the quiet, self-assured power of a flock of birds: “The thought of them lingers: flecks of tiny,dark-chocolate birds, / dressed for mourning but full of staying alive,  / ecstatic mouths filling with seeds / and unsolvable small songs.” The most unusual, and for that reason, the most fascinating piece in this issue is short fiction by the prolific and talented Wendell Mayo, “Twice-Born World.” I’m tempted to call this a prose poem or perhaps poetry prose, although it might also be categorized as sudden fiction, a burst of lyrical tension and a small, tense plot-less plot unfolding inside language that is as finely crafted as poetry: “Stay—and by the double light of the cleft and cowardly moon, we will raise a split ladle to the cold, numb mouth of the twice-born world.”  Continue reading “Hawai’i Pacific Review – 2004”

The Literary Review had a strange, other-worldly feel to it, the stories and poems a mixture of reality and surrealism. It’s some of the best damn writing I’ve read in awhile. I’ve rarely encountered a story as disturbing as “The Child,” by Edgar Brau, which depicts five women who are jailed shortly after giving birth to children. They must hide themselves behind hoods when their jailers approach; the punishment for failing to do so is death. Each woman, one by one, is taken away, presumably for execution, but not before the jailers send the women dolls as “replacements” for the babies that were taken from them. No explanation is given as to context for this story, or why these women and not others, or anything else; the women themselves have no understanding. This off-world is reality, and you must accept it on its own terms. Other noteworthy stories and poems include “The Widow in Her Weeds,” by W.J. Thornton; “Walker Percy in the Desert,” by William Miller; and “Polar Animal” by James Grinwis. [The Literary Review, 285 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940. E-mail: tlr@fdu.edu. http://www.theliteraryreview.org/] – JP Continue reading “The Literary Review – Winter 2004”

I read this literary magazine from cover to cover. (Well, OK, this is a bilingual publication. I did NOT read the Italian translations of stories, just the English.) Every story in it was fabulous, every interview with the author of the published stories interesting. From Joyce Carol Oates’s exploration of a young girl’s disappearance in a New Jersey town to Massimo Lolli’s description of a dance hall where strangers meet for a few minutes for sex and intimacy, the four stories collected in this volume were stunning. However, my favorite part of Storie is the section near the end where they include a short paragraph critiquing the stories that they rejected for this issue. Witty, kind, but also critical, these paragraphs seem a unique service to the writer: a mention of the story and its merits but also its shortcomings. [Storie,Via Suor Celestina Donati 13/E, 00167 Rome, ITALY. E-mail: storie@tiscali.it. Single issue $10. http://www.storie.it/contenuti/english.HTM] – JP Continue reading “Storie – All Write – 2003”

I expected something devoted a bit more to Southwestern literature, since Blue Mesa Review is published at the University of New Mexico, but this appeared to be a standard literary magazine without regional focus. This issue is jam packed with great essays, stories, and poems, including “Weathering the Freeze” by Bonnie Jo Campbell, a visceral description of sub-zero weather on a farm in Michigan; “Black Box,” by Katherin Nolte, a short story about a woman having an affair with a man whose wife becomes a zombie, quite possibly because the philandering woman’s husband knows voo-doo and has discovered his wife’s affair; and a long section featuring Gene Frumkin’s poetry, whose work “succeeds above ground and deep in the mine shaft.” Because I love non-fiction rooted in a sense of place, my favorite piece in this issue is an essay by Jennifer Brice, entitled “Wild Music: Reflections on Big Oil and Innocence.” In it, Brice explores the Alaskan past and present, explaining that yes, the “pipeline” and “oil” changed Alaska in myriad ways, but the core part of Alaska that “seems unwilling to compete with or improve upon nature” has remained the same. [Blue Mesa Review, University of New Mexico, Dept. of English/Hum 217, Albuquerque, NM 87131. E-mail: bluemesa@unm.edu. Single issue $12. http://bluemesareview.org] – JP Continue reading “Blue Mesa Review – 2003”

I remember reading about the controversy over Amiri Baraka’s poem, “Somebody Blew Up America,” written and performed after 9-11 and after Baraka’s appointment as poet laureate of New Jersey. One line in the poem— “Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / to stay home that day”—was condemned as anti-Semitic and led, ultimately, to Baraka’s sacking as poet laureate. In this issue, African American Review explores not only that incident (and whether it is legitimate to condemn Baraka as anti-Semitic), but they publish several controversial Baraka poems, an interview with Baraka, and essays covering the range of Baraka’s career as a poet and radical. Among the most notable poems, “Somebody Blew Up America” and “The McVouty Bible,” both showcasing Baraka’s anger and politics. My favorite essay was “Sometimes Funny, But Most Times Deadly Serious: Amiri Baraka as Political Satirist” by Jiton Sharmayne Davidson, which explores the history of Baraka’s satire, from his earliest, humorous attempts to his latest jabs at former New York Mayor Giuliani. [African American Review, Saint Louis University, Shannon Hall 119, 220 N. Grand Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63103-2007. E-mail: keenanam@slu.edu. Single issue $12. http://aar.slu.edu/] – JP Continue reading “African American Review – Summer/Fall 2003”

Don’t let the title fool you—there’s nothing rag-like about this small, beautiful journal. Encompassing two short stories, an illustrated humor piece on a phallic mushroom species, an interview with poet Mark Morris, reviews and poetry, the latest volume of Main Street Rag is as elegant in presentation as it is edgy in content. Mike Watson’s cover art alone is worth the issue price. The two short fiction pieces by Nils Reid and Mary Ann Ruhl Thomas are in keeping with Main Street’s professed bias for grittier material, treating, respectively, a morally lapsed missionary and a girl contemplating killing her father. However, it is the poetry that dominates these pages, with some established voices alongside many newer ones. Aside from a couple of sonnets, the journal favors free verse in a range of styles, from Louis Daniel Brodsky’s highly imagistic “Conception: A Recollection,” to Kevin Sweeney’s facetiously trendy “Hopefully.” There are memorable speakers in these poems. Pamela Garvey’s beggar in “Toward the Face of Absence” challenges us: “Who assumes responsibility? / Who slips pennies into a cup clanging / with emptiness.” But the editors also enjoy a laugh and on the facing page give us Nathan Graziano’s English teacher, desperate to interest a terminally bored class: “Extended metaphors / sweat in the sheets, / Payment for sticking around / for the entire poem.” Graziano closes his poem with an unforgettable deadpan that I won’t give away here. Intellectually stimulating, accessible, enjoyable—Main Street Rag is everything you could want from a literary magazine. [Main Street Rag, Main Street Rag, 4416 Shea Lane, Charlotte, NC, 28227. E-mail:editor@mainstreetrag.com. Single issue $7. http://www.mainstreetrag.com/TheHub.html]- DM Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Winter 2004”

Before even opening the first issue of Prodigal, its matte cover felt comfortable in my hands, inviting, like a good handshake at the front door of an unfamiliar residence. Inside, the journal is rich with traditional and experimental poetry that plays with form, structure, and even grammatical conventions. There are poems broken into parts, prose poems, and poems that demand attention in different spaces across the page. The issue also includes a few prose pieces, an interview with political theorist Wendy Brown, and translated works from Søren Kierkegaard, Juan Benet, and Bertolt Brecht. Continue reading “Prodigal – Fall 2015”

In a creative writing course, I was once asked to write the next scene of a story, then rewrite the scene as something entirely unexpected, and then write the scene in yet another direction. The exercise felt uncomfortable at times, pressing into strange or outrageous sequences. By contrast, the poems, stories, and essays in Milkfist take bizarre and wild turns with confidence and without apology. Self-described as “dedicated to showcasing the abscessed underbelly of art, nonfiction, poetry, and prose,” the magazine challenges readers with work that defies conventions of style, form, and storytelling. Continue reading “Milkfist – Summer 2015”

Room is a Canadian feminist publication of female authors and artists. Issue 38.4, Fieldwork, includes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art, an interview and book reviews. The pieces build upon each other, each work conversing with the ones before and after. The grounding framework of this issue is editor Taryn Hubbard’s interview with Marie Annharte Baker. Baker, a First Nation Anishnabe poet and oral storyteller, articulates that “Storytelling is a way to interact.” And while she refers to oral storytelling, her words ring true to Room where the stories interact with each other. This issue is full of conversations between stories as well as an exploration of silence as interaction. Continue reading “Room – 2015”

A Cappella Zoo, a journal of magical realism, dedicated its 15^th issue to queer stories. Though titled Queer & Familiar, rather than creating a queer and familiar text, A Cappella Zoo creates a work that queers the familiar, capitalizing on the opportunities in magical realism. This collection makes queerness familiar. Continue reading “A Cappella Zoo – Fall 2015”

The idea behind 3Elements Literary Review is a fun one. Each issue, writers are provided with—you guessed it—three elements which they need to incorporate in their piece. Discovering the different (and sometimes similar) ways in which the writers implement the elements is like exploring a treasure map with the three chosen words as a compass. The Winter 2016 issue required writers to get imaginative with the elements ‘mania,’ ‘tower,’ and ‘exposure,’ taking readers on a whirlwind journey through poetry, fiction, nonfiction, photography, and art. Continue reading “3Elements Review – Winter 2016”

Reading Still Point Arts Quarterly is like being able to go into your local art gallery, all in the comfort of your favorite pair of pajamas. With selections from the Still Point Arts Gallery, each issue is a peek through the gallery’s windows, the Winter 2015 issue featuring selections from the exhibition: Simplicity. Continue reading “Still Point Arts Quarterly – Winter 2015”

ZYZZYVA’s Fall 2015 issue took me a very long time to review. Not because it was long or dense or difficult, but because I did not want to finish reading. Every time I started to write, I, like a vortex, would be sucked back into reading and my critical abilities would evaporate. I would become that teenie-bopper hiding under the sheets with a flashlight late into the early morning savoring each page, each character, each line. Continue reading “ZYZZYVA – Fall 2015”

If focus is the key to success, Barrow Street is throwing straight bullseyes. Forget author interviews, genre-jumping, and flashy art, and delve into the text, straight into the words on the page. The Winter 2014/15 issue has a simple no-nonsense design. Authors are listed alphabetically. Bios are found at the back in fine print jammed together to save precious real estate. No editor’s letter. No ads. Just a tight masthead and a New York address and 96 outstanding poems, running the gamut from short and sweet to epic and tragic. Sixty-two poets are published, ranging from first-timers to big names from big institutions with supporting bibliography. Whatever process the Barrow Street editors and readers are using to sift through their slush, which I imagine to be a mountainous snow bank, doesn’t change a thing: because it is working. Since 2000, they have had 18 poems selected to be anthologized in Best American Poetry. Continue reading “Barrow Street – Winter 2014/15”

If I were shipwrecked on a deserted island, I would take a machete and a subscription to Rattle. Perhaps a seagull could deliver quarterly. I’d open a coconut and start reading the conversation with the working poet that is included with each issue, then work my way randomly through the alphabetical compilation, memorizing and reciting to all my friends: the geckos, turtles, butterflies and rocks. If I lost my sanity, at least I would be happy. Continue reading “Rattle – Fall 2015”

In 1981, I spent two weeks in the former Soviet Union. Every city was a highlight, but the most breathtaking destination was Peter the Great’s summer palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The garden fountains were fun, yet I found the dazzlingly golden statues most extraordinary. Those recollections piqued my interest in reading an issue of St. Petersburg Review. Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2014”

The Common magazine aims to present “bold, engaging literature and art.” Two informative essays accompanied by art definitely meet that criteria. The first, “Millennium Camera” by Jonathon Keats, is a fascinating look at a pinhole camera he created “with a one-thousand-year exposure time that will remain inside Amherst College’s Stearns Steeple until 3015” when an image over time will be captured for a future generation to see. With that in mind, there’s a wonderful surprise for current readers. On the last page of this magazine is a diagram for a Century Camera that can be cut out, assembled, and exposed for 100 years. Continue reading “The Common – October 2015”

A lot of originality is packed into a smart little anthology called Studio One. Take a look at the bright cover art, “Old Lady with the Black Eye” by multi-talented Ernest Williamson, greeting readers. Williamson has an additional painting within the volume, “Artist Delving into Her Craft,” which on the one hand I can’t quite figure out, and on the other hand I find impossible to stop looking at. Also outstanding is a portfolio of five luminous scenes by Colorado photographer Rita Thomas. “Pixie Forest,” which appears to be frost-covered trees by moonlight, is most stunning. Continue reading “Studio One – 2015”

Alligator Juniper is named for a tree in the juniper family with bark like alligator skin, and the editors of the magazine say the name “invites both the regional and the exotic.” The magazine does so successfully by including pieces from their National Writing Contests in Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry along with the winning pieces from Prescott College’s annual James & Judith Walsh Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards. I admire how undergraduate students receive the opportunity for publication alongside outstanding pieces by professional writers. In addition to the award-winning pieces and nominees, the magazine includes an interview and a curated gallery of creative works. Continue reading “Alligator Juniper – 2016”

A beautiful hardcover issue, the 50th Anniversary Issue of Tampa Review is rich with colorful images and powerful contemporary writing. Though there is no set theme, each piece contains strong yearning from the characters or figures, bringing the reader close to intimate thoughts. Continue reading “Tampa Review – 2015”

BULL Number 5 is covered in colorful, urban-styled art, created by the late Patrick Haley, whose work is profiled at length in this issue. Inside, his black and white drawings of surreal settings, strange creatures, and highly-detailed settings take influences from a variety of interesting visual sources such as Salvador Dali, R. Crumb, Heavy Metal magazine, and street graffiti. Each of the thirteen pages of drawings and sketches plucked from the artist’s notebooks tells a story, even the most basic “practice” sketches, with a couple in particular that could make one feel as though they could fall right into the page. Continue reading “BULL – 2015”

Crab Fat Magazine—already a publication seeking more diversity in literature—presents their January 2016 “QPOC Issue,” featuring work by 14 queer poets of color. This issue is a strong one, filled with a variety of poetic styles that will leave readers entranced, their eyes opened. Continue reading “Crab Fat Magazine – January 2016”

Storm Cellar is a slim little lit mag, just the right size to slip into my already-near-bursting tote bag. It’s the perfect magazine to keep on hand when readers have a few moments to spare before bed or while drinking their morning coffee. Continue reading “Storm Cellar – Summer/Fall 2015”

Upstreet 11 contains seven fiction pieces, six creative nonfiction pieces, forty-five poems, and an interview. That’s over 200 pages of engaging entertainment from a broad variety of accomplished authors. Continue reading “upstreet – 2015”

The Fall 2015 Bellevue Literary Review from NYU’s Langone Medical Center operates under the subtitle “Embattled: Ramifications of War.” Self-described as a “journal of humanity and human experience” this issue focuses specifically on narratives surrounding not only war, but war’s varying and often heartbreaking effects on the human experience. The short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction explore delicate topics such as PTSD, death on the frontlines, and post-deployment readjustments with an unflinching matter-of-factness paired with beautiful language. Continue reading “Bellevue Literary Review – Fall 2015”

Harvard Review began life in 1986 as a four-page quarterly called Erato. Today it’s a 200+ page, perfect-bound semi-annual. Many Pulitzer Prize writers have been featured over the years, and this issue contains two Pulitzer nominees: Martín Espada, a 2006 finalist, who writes a tribute to his father in “The Shamrock,” and Cornelius Eady, a 1992 nominee. His poem “The Death of Robert Johnson” has these skilled, telling lines: “That that gal I kissed, / And her husband seeing that, / Was the fine print, / The way things get / Paid off.” Continue reading “Harvard Review – 2015”

The Bitter Oleander’s autumn issue is a motherlode of bold interpretations softened with poems like the delightfully introspective, “I Don’t Want to Write” by Simon Anton Nino Diego Raena. “Leave me alone, please. / All I want is to enjoy the solitude of being / a nonentity in this lightless balcony.” Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – Autumn 2015”

Story publishes pieces following a particular theme, and the Monsters issue is as haunting as the title suggests. Stephen T. Asma writes in his essay, “Monsters and the Moral Imagination,” “Good monster stories can transmit moral truths to us by showing us examples of dignity and depravity without preaching or proselytizing.” The pieces chosen for this issue do exactly that, ranging from things that go bump in the night to memories that haunt individuals each day. Continue reading “Story – 2015”

Paralleling the instructions in the publication’s opening “Salutations from the Staff”—where the reader is told to gather a variety of ingredients to let simmer—the editors of Meat for Tea have compiled a diverse selection of genres and writing styles in the “Fond” issue. The unifying thread among the pieces is experimentation, either in structure or content. This issue is a collection of permissions, inviting readers to explore the new directions of contemporary creative writing. Continue reading “Meat for Tea – 2015”

The Fall 2015 issue of Glimmer Train Stories is a delightful showcase of short fiction from both new and established writers, packing twelve short stories, an interview, and a short essay in its 200+ pages. Whether there is an explicit theme is unknown, but the majority of the pieces have a couple of common threads, primarily youth and family. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Fall 2015”

Most moths are thin, tiny, and fly towards illumination and pollinate. When the 25-page softback-pamphlet from County Cavan, Ireland landed in my mailbox in Albuquerque, I was intrigued at the journal’s similarity to its namesake. Upon first flip through The Moth, it’s clear they take their art seriously—a photo of gold fish bowl with a bullet hole by Robert C. Jackson entitled “Rotten Escape,” Pat Perry’s “In the Yard,” ink sketches, Diaz Alamá’s haunting portraits of stunning muses and Wen Wu’s cover art, “Wild Swan,” which captures the profile of serene femininity—prepare the reader for a look into the finer side of life. The detail, delicacy and craftsmanship of the selected art, supported by the power of the prose, make it clear from first glimpse, The Moth is not just another freebee-wannabe stacked-by-the-coffee-shop-door listings pile selling ad space and flavor-of-the-week. This tiny journal is flying towards the light. Continue reading “The Moth – Autumn 2015”

Well, this is both overwhelming and embarrassing. This issue of Zymbol is the “Big Fiction Issue,” so there are “The Private Dream Notebooks of Clive Barker,” and the interview of Gail Potocki with her “Freaks of/and Nature,” and Douglas Basford on translating Valentino Zeichen’s poetry. Continue reading “Zymbol – Summer/Autumn 2015”

Bone Bouquet is a biannual print journal that features poetry by women writers. The Spring 2015 issue includes a varied range of voices and styles, and a satisfying selection of creative forms. The speakers throughout are strong, self-aware, and are unafraid to expose their flaws. This slim volume covers topics of grief, loss, and self-consciousness, while also displaying the beauty of language through several complex descriptions of the surrounding world. Continue reading “Bone Bouquet – Spring 2015”

Ruminate explains their choice of title in the beginning of each issue: a “community chewing on the mysteries of life, faith, and art,” and for too long I let the f-word scare me away. Faith. After choosing to leave the faith I was raised in as an adult, what does faith have to do with me now? Would I really be able to ruminate with Ruminate while claiming no faith as my own? But within reading the first paragraph of the editor’s note in the Fall 2015 issue, I set my worries aside. Brianna Van Dyke shares a conversation with her young son about playing with his Spanish-speaking friend and understanding one another, in which he says, “But mostly when he laughs, it’s in English, and I know just what he means . . . And Omar laughs a lot, Mom.” Even if I don’t speak the language of faith, the shared aspects of life and art can give even the most faithless something to chew on. Continue reading “Ruminate – Fall 2015”

If decomP were published on paper, I would consider it a “little mag.” As such, it invites readers to its pages without overwhelming while at the same time delivering writing of depth and breadth. Publishing since 2004, decomP is an online monthly with an experienced editorial staff that assure readers a commitment to selecting the best in a range of genres and styles. decomP also takes advantage of their e-format by providing quality recordings of works read by their authors, further enhancing the modern literary experience. Continue reading “decomP – November 2015”

With three issues a year, publishing fiction, Thrice Fiction is up-front and in-your-face, and not just when it comes to what genre it publishes and when. Its content is just as in-your-face with larger-than-life writing, and with full-color art donning almost every page. Continue reading “Thrice Fiction – August 2015”

If there’s one thing I appreciate, it’s a thin journal. Lightweight, no long-term commitment intimidation, something us not-so-fast-readers can truly read in one sitting. Add to that over a dozen names on the table of contents, and there’s no doubt the variety will add some interesting diversity as a return on the short-term time investment. This is an apt descriptor to introduce Fox Cry Review published out of University of Wisconsin – Fox Valley. Continue reading “Fox Cry Review – 2015”

Cactus Heart is one wicked lit mag. With a spiny cactus bursting out of a skeleton ribcage as their logo, don’t go searching these pages for the soft and sentimental. No box of Kleenex needed here. Instead, be ready to steel yourself against hard truths, take a moment’s pause to settle quietly brutal characters into your imagination, and shift world views subtly through the surreal and abruptly through the confessional. Continue reading “Cactus Heart – June 2015”

“Enamored” isn’t a word I have reason to use often, but it’s the only word that properly explains how the Fall 2015 issue of NANO Fiction left me feeling. From the cover, a digital collage by Andrea Trninic, the perfect shade and gory subject matter for October, to the Sehr Flash: Fiction Becomes Music feature, I am completely enamored. Continue reading “NANO Fiction – 2015”

The Malahat Review has published their $1000 Long Poem Contest winners, and boy are they long, and powerful. Gary Geddes’ 18-page persona poem “The Resumption of Play” gives a post-modern kaleidoscope view of a First Nations boy’s brutal kidnapping into one of the residential schools that blights a chapter of Canadian History with shame. With lines such as, “Kill the Indian in the child was Scott’s / ’final solution.’ Remove parents, culture, language, replace them with perverts, / sociopaths,” Geddes pulls no punches. Continue reading “The Malahat Review – Summer 2015”

“Scottie as The Captain covers her head with her dress, flips the table over, jumps in and rows desperately.” You’ve just read stage directions for “Excerpt from Scottie Doesn’t Play,” a one-act play by Da’Shay Portis in the literary magazine Fourteen Hills – proof that this thick volume is packed with diverse experimental, progressive and cross-genre writings and images. Continue reading “Fourteen Hills – 2015”

Pinning down a comprehensive definition of the term creative nonfiction appears to be an imprecise, ongoing pursuit. Creative Nonfiction’s section editor Dinty W. Moore tackles the subject with “A Genre by Any Other Name?” Noting that Creative Nonfiction Editor Lee Gutkind did not invent the term, Moore brings in quotes from essayist Phillip Lopate and author Philip Gerard who pooh-pooh the term, then he picks up more positive opinions of the classification, calling on various other writers, editors, and critics. Continue reading “Creative Nonfiction – Summer 2015”