NewPages Blog :: Magazines

The seventieth issue of Arc, an annual journal published in Ottawa, Canada, features an email interview with poet Elizabeth Bachinsky, in which she writes: “We really are living in hybrid times.” A fitting remark both for the “cultural capital” writers find themselves living with and for this intelligently edited gathering, which takes as its theme “Reuse and Recycle: Finding Poetry in Canada.” Poetry editor Shane Rhodes contributes the titular essay, considering reuse and recycling in the context of found poetry: its background in Canada, its shifting motivations, and its internet-driven permutations. With few exceptions, however, most of the work in Arc considers reuse obliquely and explores material subjects through honed language rather than through the repurposing of archival or computer-generated texts. Continue reading “Arc Poetry Magazine – 2013”

Aufgabe is a tome. It weighs 1.5 pounds on my bathroom scale, and that’s a paperback without any glossy pages. The journal publishes once a year, and the 2012 issue contains American poetry, a section of poems by poets from El Salvador in the original and in translation edited by Christian Nagler, other poems in translation, essays, reviews, and “notes.” Continue reading “Aufgabe – 2012”

Court Green devotes a big chunk of every issue to a dossier on a special topic or theme. This year it’s sex. There are many fine poems here, but before I get to them, I want to make an observation based on reading so many poems about sex in one bunch. Continue reading “Court Green – 2013”

The experience of a minute occurs differently on a train, in sixty parts, rather than the measurable clattering of east coast winter hellos, vowels in mini-seconds through the incisors. Traveling by rail has been the essential inorganic character of thousands of recollections of the Western canon. Like the prospects of vaudeville and print journalism, it was meant to last forever. And thanks to a moving, technically masterful essay by Barbara Hass in the current issue of Fjords, it does. Her essay, “This Wilderness We Can’t Contain,” is imaginative without losing the tight management of its political and philosophical themes, without unraveling the travel narrative in the irresistible surrealism of the setting. In unpacking the 2011 flood of the Missouri River, she captures an essential rail experience—with the expert and shifting lens of the other elements that contribute to environmental disaster. Continue reading “Fjords Review – 2013”

“Accept the changes, Celebrate the advantages, Find Purposes.” This quote from Mike Shirk, a disabled artist featured in Kaleidoscope, exemplifies the humanity, humility, and honesty you’ll find in the issue. A magazine dedicated to discussing disabilities through art, fiction, poetry, and personal essays, Kaleidoscope is inspiring. This “Significant Relationship” issue (the last print issue before they transition to a digital model) offers comfort to caregivers, understanding to outsiders, and hope to the disabled. Kaleidoscope is different than almost every other literary magazine I’ve read; it is art with a purpose—with a humanitarian agenda and a palpable sense of community. Continue reading “Kaleidoscope – Winter/Spring 2013”

Reading a long short story is a special process somewhere between starting up slow and circling around for the long haul, as you do for a novel, and nabbing on the fly the conflict and character quirks thrown out by the early paragraphs of a short story which are swiftly brought to some end. So I respect and admire the unique mission of The Long Story: to publish stories of eight to twenty thousand words (most between eight and twelve thousand) and let the reader develop a relationship with the ideas and people unfolding between the first and twenty-thousandth words. Continue reading “The Long Story – 2013”

In the United States, the word freedom is talismanic, introduced from kindergarten as the American creation myth and held up by politicians and news commentators, rightly or not, as the premier American export. We own the idea—so the subtext goes—and the rest of the world struggles to become like us. So when I hold in my hand the Winter 2012 issue of Mānoa, called On Freedom: Spirit, Art, and State, I wonder how each piece and photograph defines freedom: does the definition conform or aspire to the American definition, and is it first and foremost political? Continue reading “Manoa – Winter 2012”

If any magazine could create a mythology in one edition it would be Poetry. To accomplish this in one issue is next to miraculous, but this is what they have done in the April 2013 issue. Christian Winman and a small cast of editors make their work look effortless, the selections of work by established poets speaking for a larger humanity. Continue reading “Poetry – April 2013”

The Potomac Review publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from a wide selection of established and emerging authors. From the homepage of their website: “Our philosophy welcomes variety, and through it, we create an organic flow of ideas to contribute to the literary conversation.” The conversation in this issue is definitely worth checking out. Continue reading “Potomac Review – Winter 2013”

In REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters, Billy Longino interviews Stewart O’Nan and extracts the following prescription: “I found that in a lot of the plotted fiction the plot was getting in the way of what I thought the novel does best: create depth and use time to illuminate character.” The interview explores O’Nan’s literary theory in compelling insight. Hearing the analysis also informs a reading of the rest of the journal, in which writers succeed in illuminating character. Continue reading “REAL – Fall/Winter 2012”

Take note of the subtitle of Windhover. If you’re not a Christian, or if you don’t entertain at least a little curiosity about the claims of the Christian world regarding the salvific message and death-into-life of what Brian Doyle calls “that gaunt rabbi from Jerusalem two thousand years ago,” this may not be the journal for you. Every poem (there are thirty), prose piece (three, and two reviews) and work of art (several color reproductions by each of two impressive visual artists) requires at least some familiarity with the Biblical and cultural roots of Christian thought. Allusions to the life and teachings of Christ and to the tension inherent in faithful living abound in this issue. If you grok these allusions, this journal is an absolute treasure. If you don’t, you might be confused—or you might become a seeker, wandering a step or two toward conversion. Continue reading “Windhover – Spring 2013”

Zymbol is steeped in summer. A journal of surrealist fiction and poetry, this issue’s transcendence—occasionally incorporating the grotesque—appears with a tinge of nostalgia for warm days that have slipped away. With this nostalgia comes a feeling of loneliness, and an issue filled with introverted voices trying to find a connection to the world around them. Continue reading “Zymbol – Spring/Summer 2013”

Picking up this issue of Beecher’s Magazine is like sneaking into a speakeasy and becoming part of a very cool, very exclusive club. The gray cover of the perfect-bound journal is distinguished by a gold squiggle and a round cut-out that only reveals the issue’s number. It seemed to me that the whole Beecher’s team was on the same gold-edged page; the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art chosen by the editors is just as mature and inviting as the journal’s design. Continue reading “Beecher’s Magazine – Spring 2012”

Before reading Chtenia: Readings from Russia, my only experience with Russian literature was in college, where I read Chekov’s “The Lady with the Dog” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat.” I fell in love with these stories and realized that I needed more Russians in my life. Chtenia satisfies with its wonderful selection of fiction, poetry, and essays from Russian authors both past and present. The winter 2013 issue is a special treat because it is dedicated to all things dark and scary in Russian literature. Senior Editor Tamara Eidelman writes: Continue reading “Chtenia – Winter 2013”

Appalachian State University’s Department of English publishes Cold Mountain Review. The western North Carolina institution is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the town of Boone, and, yes, the town was named after Daniel Boone. His pioneering and exploratory spirit persists in the editorial stance of Cold Mountain Review, which is “interested in the way contemporary literature is testing the boundaries of genre” and “features work intended to transport the reader to unexpected landscapes—emotional terrains that are sometimes joyful, occasionally disconcerting, always interesting.” Continue reading “Cold Mountain Review – Fall 2012”

I’ll be honest: revision is not my favorite part of the writing process. (I like to think I did it right the first time, even though that’s clearly not the case.) draft is special because it occupies an interesting place in the literary journal scene. Instead of rewarding the polished version of stories and poems with publication, the journal rewards the process by which writers make their good work even better. There are only two pieces in the journal: a short story and an excerpt from a book of poetry. Each piece is presented in an interesting manner: the final version is presented on the recto of each page, directly facing the draft version on the verso. Continue reading “draft – Fall 2012”

One of the poems I keep coming back to in this issue of J Journal is Judith Skillman’s “Estrangement.” I like the care and precision with which this fierce poem about old age is constructed. I like its John Donne-like metaphors and the way it broadens out from the senses to far-flung and historical references; from “Long nights / sleepless, punctuated by sleet,” to “the city seven hours south of Paris // called L’Age . . .” to the “second century martyr Perpetua, / coming now into the arena / to be mauled by lion, hyena, and laughter.” And I like its seemingly tangential relation to this journal’s stated purpose—in the words of the editors, “to gather creative writing under the justice banner.” Read in any other journal, it might not trigger associations to questions of justice. But its inclusion here enriches it with an existential dimension—what is “just,” after all, about growing old? Continue reading “J Journal – Fall 2012”

We all know the jabberwock, Lewis Carroll’s monster with its eyes of flame, riffling through the tulgey woods and burbling as it came. The story of the jabberwock “fill[s] [Alice’s] head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are.” We might say that read-worthy literature is all like that, filling our heads with images and sounds whose meanings reach far beyond their mundane expression. I imagine that’s where the title of this journal, created by students and faculty of the Department of English at Mississippi State University, wants to point us: beyond our daily routines, into relevant, effective words that revise our ordinariness. Continue reading “Jabberwock Review – Winter 2013”

The history of millions in one cold breath, one empty train station, one terrifying silence. This issue of The Manhattan Review plants us in the aftermath of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and then attacks it mercilessly from the individual, not the statistical. Those who lived to deal with the silence, to inhabit neighborhoods forever changed, move on. Continue reading “The Manhattan Review – Fall/Winter 2012/2013”

The Mississippi Review, edited in Hattiesburg, printed in Brooklyn, and disseminated worldwide, does not accept unsolicited work, but its winter 2013 compilation is diverse, as though culled from every doorstep in this hemisphere, and the next. I found myself acutely aware of the language in the journal. You can have rich ideas but spare prose, and for me, when you have both you have discovered something rich and renewable. The takeaway is clear; buy two copies, so you can draw exclamations in the margin of one and keep the other pristine. Continue reading “Mississippi Review – Winter 2013”

How could one resist picking it up! Who, after all, could resist such a title? “The Disquiet of Men: in which we skirt tragedy, watch marriages wither, and seek direction while riding the rails.” Continue reading “The New Quarterly – Winter 2013”

I hear women’s voices when I read this magazine. I should: this is a “140-page, perfect-bound, all-women’s literary journal published annually by the University of Alabama at Birmingham”; every voice is a woman’s. But I didn’t expect to feel such a bond, such a connection, and I was unexpectedly moved as I read: these writers know how I feel, they live my life, they speak my language. I teach fiction writing, so I went to the story section first. Every story made me smile with recognition and appreciation, and each one left an echo in my mind, an impression I carried around with me as I do with the best literature—a new way of perceiving my ordinary world, no longer ordinary, thanks to these women writers. Continue reading “PMS poemmemoirstory – 2013”

A Public Space showcases a splendid selection of stories that balance plot, pacing, and literary innovation without sacrificing what makes classic short fiction remain essential. From the first story in the volume, “American Lawn” by Jessica Francis Kane, to the last, a translation, “Something in Us Wants to Be Saved” by Patricio Pron, the reader glides through the narrative. There is enough drive in the stories, metered without sacrificing the thrall of language, to make you read endlessly, wanting to know the end, but letting the powerful pacing direct your review—allowing all truths in its own time. Continue reading “A Public Space – Winter 2012”

War is a constant throughout human history. Even now as I write this review, North Korea is threatening all-out war with South Korea and the United States (even though they have technically been at war since 1953, but we won’t get into that). The latest issue of The Sewanee Review examines all the facets of war in its collection of fiction, poetry, and essays. From the battlefields of the distant past to the conflicts of today, the authors in this issue examine the heavy cost of war and the impact it has on those who survive. Continue reading “The Sewanee Review – Winter 2013”

All the bad, bad boys. You sort of wanted them to fraternize with each other—take the sociopath Greg from Erika Wurth’s short story “Freight Train” and introduce him to the Matthew/Luke character (trust me, they are merged in the story too) from Graeme Mullen’s memoir of creating a community art project, then place them under the suicidal tutelage of Ilya Leybovich’s eponymous ‘suicide artist’ flailing for good fortune in the Upper East Side. I wanted the characters to meet each other, and that is how you know that even the surreal ones are thoroughly alive. Continue reading “Southern California Review – 2013”

World Literature Today always packs an exciting table of contents, one that makes me want to spring up off my couch and catch the first international flight. I see the shining achievement of WLT in the editors’ ability to balance what is innovative and cutting edge with what is well established and relevant. Its unique content distinguishes it from most mainstream literary magazines, giving it vitality and spunk. This special double issue treats photography as a modern narrative form. Featuring twenty-one photographers, the spread beautifully illuminates many intersections between literature and photography. Continue reading “World Literature Today – March-April 2013”

Brevity Poetry Review publishes—what should be obvious from the title—short poems, all coming in at under 30 lines. Each issue puts forth just 10 of these short poems, giving more weight to each one. And this issue contains no mediocre poems; they are all worth reading. Continue reading “Brevity – March 2013”

Ghost Ocean Magazine publishes some of the best poetry and short prose; as far as long prose goes, they say, “Just don’t waste our time.” Published on their website in an easy to navigate and read format, the writing feels cohesive, like it really does belong together under one roof. Continue reading “Ghost Ocean Magazine – January 2013”

Spry is a new literary journal that claims to be a place “for people who excel at taking risks.” And certainly, even in their very first issue, they have succeeded with this. Continue reading “Spry – 2013”

Star 82 Review puts forth its first issue, filled with sections titled “Shorts,” “Postcard Lit,” “Art Post,” “Erasure Text,” and “Hidden Gems.” I wish this magazine well, because they are already publishing great work. Continue reading “Star 82 Review – March 2013”

SWAMP is an online magazine that exists to feature the writing from postgraduate creative writing students. Edited by postgraduate writers, it is a great community for these students. Continue reading “SWAMP – Number 12”

Tongue doesn’t claim to provide any answers, to provide stories that reveal them, but the editors “revel, instead, in poems and art at ease with a kind of ambivalent vulnerability.” And as I read this issue, I certainly felt that. Continue reading “Tongue – Winter 2013”

You know you should have bought a subscription to a magazine when you learn, one issue too late, that the editors were going to host a retrospective on Robert Lowell (AGNI 75). Or when, casually perusing the issue at hand, you discover apparitions of Ray Bradbury (see David Huddle’s piece), Cynthia Ozick (see Tamas Dobozy channel Harper’s The Bloodline of the Alkanas), and Allegra Goodman (see Wendy Rawlings’s ending channeling La Vita Nuova). The perceptible echo from these influences emerges from talented writers in their own right. And that’s just the fiction. Continue reading “AGNI – Number 76”

“Don’t write like a girl. Don’t write like a boy. Write like a mother#^@%*&,” the Rumpus columnist “Sugar” advised young writer Elissa Bassist in 2010. Bassist took the advice to heart, making it into an “anthem and a lifestyle” that is about “quitting your bitching, getting out of your own ego, and getting to work.” Three years later, she and “Sugar”—now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things, extend the discussion in an email conversation that appropriately kicks off this powerful collection of work by women writers. Continue reading “Creative Nonfiction – Winter 2013”

Event is a Canadian literary journal associated with Douglas College in British Columbia. While they primarily publish poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and reviews from Canadian writers, they do accept submissions from all over. Their aesthetic seems broad ranging, with an inclination for stories that have a hint of the mysterious or unconventional. Continue reading “Event – Fall 2012”

Freefall bills itself as “Canada’s Magazine of Exquisite Writing.” Their mission statement commits to publishing 85% Canadian content, ranging from new and emerging to experienced writers. The editor’s opening statement, written by Micheline Maylor, describes an opposition to demolishing Al Purdy’s A-frame house, asking: “If muscle has the ability to remember, then why not a wall, a house, a landscape?” Her preamble continues, “For what is this life without a little magic?” and sets the tone for the creative work that follows. Continue reading “Freefall – Winter 2013”

Illness, arguably the direct or indirect source of human suffering, prostrates us all. Accordingly, theories of illness and healthcare form an uneasy truce for such icons as Karl Marx, Pope John Paul II, and Ayn Rand even though their philosophies would diverge on many other topics. Moreover, one might argue that the management of limited medical resources has become the preoccupation of our age. But when you are sick, philosophies fail; you seek mercy, and sometimes the voice of that mercy comes from literature. The Healing Muse, a journal produced by The Center for Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, offers a platform for such voice. As editor Deirdre Neilen notes in her introduction to the journal, “The land ahead may be unfamiliar territory, but the same humor, resilience and desire propel our poets and essayists and their characters to chance the unknown and to chart the journey for us.” Continue reading “The Healing Muse – Fall 2012”

Spare, elegant, and graceful, The Hollins Critic descends like a belle of the upper South on bibliophiles starved for beauty. Fittingly, this publication emanates from the first women’s college in Virginia, an institution with a proud tradition dedicated to creativity and “effective self-expression.” The accomplished artist Susan Avishai, after decades devoted to the international study and practice of art, entered Hollins University in 2001 to pursue a degree in creative writing. Between writing seminars, she painted in Hollins’s studios, and since 2004 has contributed a striking pen-and-ink cover portrait to each issue of The Hollins Critic. Avishai’s art perfectly launches the reader into the fierce economy of its unique format, its passion for literature, and its flair. Continue reading “The Hollins Critic – December 2012”

Strong fiction does not have an expiration date. You can leave it on a shelf for centuries, but it will never lose its potency or the sense of joy it instills in new readers. The 2012 thematic issue from Iron Horse Literary Review celebrates the strong fiction of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne by showcasing three of his most popular stories: “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “Young Goodman Brown,” and “The Gentle Boy.” The issue celebrates his fiction, but it also reexamines his work through the eyes of three prominent women authors. There is a heavy dose of irony here because Hawthorne dismissed women writers of his time as “scribblers” of market fiction. The result is a terrific issue juxtaposition of Hawthorne’s voice and voices of contemporary women writers. Continue reading “Iron Horse Literary Review – 2012”

The 2012 Late Fall issue of The Literary Review is out of control. No, really, the issue is dedicated to loss of control. “Control is an abstraction and a grail,” says Editor Minna Proctor. “Humans are driven to maddening distraction, dangerous and untenable lengths, in pursuit of control. We don’t ever get control, yet we hunt it.” The writers in this issue contribute a great selection of fiction and poetry that examines this hunt and shows how easy it is to lose control. Continue reading “The Literary Review – Fall 2012”

One of the many pleasing things about this issue of The Missouri Review is the design of the magazine, easy to hold in the hands, with a neutrally-colored cover and larger-than-usual font. Easy on the eyes, gentle and pleasant. Continue reading “The Missouri Review – Fall 2012”

Here is what to like about the Summer 2012 issue of New Haven Review: Continue reading “New Haven Review – Summer 2012”

The body of great literature being created outside of the English-speaking world is vast; St. Petersburg Review is taking great strides to bridge the gap between cultures and languages that sometimes keep writers and readers apart. The thick volume is jam-packed with fiction, poetry, plays, and creative nonfiction plucked from everywhere in the world. A great deal of the work has been reflected through the prism of translation: a double-edged sword. Reading work in translation is, in some ways, like seeing a great painting through a pair of cracked eyeglasses. You can see the whole of the work and take it to heart, but there will always be some measure of intellectual distance between you and the artist. On the other hand, translations such as these are wonderful because you get a taste of the different music made by phrases that emerge from minds trained to think in unfamiliar languages. Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2010/2011”

The editors of South Loop Review invite “essays and memoir, lyric and experimental forms, non-linear narratives, blended genre, photography and art . . . personal essays and memoir with fresh voices and new takes on presentation and form.” I reprint the description for emphasis. The magazine is not feigning interest in the experimental. Rather, essays appear (in Micah McCrary’s case) as meditations on color through a list format, toy with a redline feature as a method of managing conflicting emotions (as in Adriana Páramo’s case), and explore what one might term the “meta-essay” through the careful tides of stating and redacting comments about what illness can signify (see Vicki Weiqi Yang’s essay). Continue reading “South Loop Review – 2012”

The Blue Route is a national online journal for undergraduate students. This issue offers writers from Carnegie Mellon University, Notre Dame of Maryland University, Stephen F. Austin State University, Susquehanna University, University of Colorado Denver, University of Houston, and University of South Florida. The writing is of high quality and is enjoyable to read. Continue reading “The Blue Route – January 2013”

In her editor’s note, Sara Rauch hopes that this issue will “bring the bright and wild and unusual into your spirit this winter.” Certainly, there are images such as these throughout the issue that bring a little warmth to my room: “there lies me and you sitting on the floor / with a bucket of strawberries, whipped cream . . .” (Shannon Shuster’s “alright  .”); “standing at the water’s edge / leaning against the night breeze / taut as harp strings for balance” (Ned Randle’s “Lake Song”); “When I was younger I would wait / for the first bloom of the blackberry / thickets and collect berries in a mason jar” (Matthew Wimberley’s “Indian Summer, Reading Lorca”); and “The heat pins my shirt to my skin like a silver star” (Arah McManamna’s “Cactus Flower”). Continue reading “Cactus Heart – Winter 2013”

For something truly original and definitely a break from the normal online journal, take a look at Danse Macabre. Not only is the writing a break from the straight literary, but the images and the layout are as well. The style, as described by Editor Adam Henry Carrière, is “noir coloratura.” Enter this issue, “Terra,” and be greeted by a skeleton who is about to cut down a tree with an ax, be greeted with a type of march song played on the organ. Continue reading “Danse Macabre – March 2013”

If I had to come up with a certain way to describe this issue, it would be that it is about reminiscing, of looking back into the past and either wishing to return to that time, or just appreciating it for what it was. Continue reading “Flycatcher – January 2013”