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NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Step Up Ohioans!

Call for Submissions: Ohio Childhood Poems
Extended Deadline – August 1

Poems of place and on characters might be especially welcomed for this collection. Name the people, places, brands, businesses, landmarks, institutions, locations that impacted your life as a child and your life as a poet. The collection will be edited by Robert Miltner of Kent State University and published by Pudding House Publications in Columbus, Ohio.

Reader’s & Educator’s Guides

Reader’s guides are one of my favorite features to encourage teachers to use lit mags in the classroom. The Healing Muse, SUNY Upstate Medical University’s journal of literary and visual arts, has begun developing Reader’s and Educator’s Guides for their publication. On the site now are guides for volumes 7 and 8. Here are a couple of the questions for volume 8:

In the third paragraph of Bromberg’s “Poetry and the Creative Healing Process” (p.31), the author discusses the relationship between community and healing. In what ways can writing about illness be therapeutic? What difference does it make to write for an audience?

The speakers of “Puzzled” (p. 81) and “After a Mastectomy” (p. 32) both express yearnings to be made “whole.” How do physical changes in the body affect self-perception and identity? In what ways do the speakers seek help from others to work through these feelings?

New Lit on the Block :: Mandala

Mandala Journal, a publication of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia, defines itself as “an online student-run multicultural journal for poets, writers, artists, and thinkers.”

The first online issue launched April 14 and includes a conversation with Kwame Anthony Appiah, poems by Cave Canem poet Raina Leon, a short story by Philippine playwright and fiction writer, Peter Mayshle, an essay by academic/artist Shanti Pillai about living each year in Havana, NYC, and Chennai, a photo essay by Toronto-based photographer Jose Romelo Lagman exploring “Rooted Cosmopolitanism”, art and writing from Athens Clark Co. elementary school students PLUS work by writers and artists across the US and Canada whose works were selected via open submissions.

WILLA Launched

WILLA (Women in Letters & Literary Arts) seeks to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities.

WILLA was founded in August 2009 to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding the critical reception of women’s creative writing in our current culture.

WILLA’s structure is “grass-roots.” The individuals presently involved in creating WILLA are spread across the country, represent different identities, work from within a range of aesthetics, and share the common goal to create a forum at which all women writers may engage in much longed for conversations about literature being produced by women and its reception by the larger culture.

SCR “Virtual” Themed Issues Library

From the SCR website: Occasionally The South Carolina Review will publish an issue devoted in large part to a particular theme. Examples in the past have included Virginia Woolf International (vol. 29.1), Ireland in the Arts and Humanities (vol. 32.1), and James Dickey Revisited (vol. 37.2).

Such themes, however, often transcend the boundaries of any particular issue of The South Carolina Review: the idea for a themed issue may grow out of past submissions, and the themed issue itself can elicit writings in response years down the line. In addition, the publication of a themed issue often generates other projects for the Press. (The Virginia Woolf International issue, for example, led to a series of Woolf conference proceedings volumes, among other publications.)

The virtual “Themed Issues” in the South Carolina Review On-Line Library therefore expand considerably upon their original, paper-and-ink counterparts. Not only do they include articles and other writings from past issues of The South Carolina Review, but they also incorporate other relevant CUDP publications as well as links to related online resources. Be sure to check back periodically, as new content is added as it becomes available.

The following virtual themed issues are currently available:

* Virginia Woolf International
* Ireland in the Arts and Humanities
* James Dickey Revisited

BECA Accepting Guest Curator Proposals

BECA: Bridge for Emerging Contemporary Art is now accepting exhibition proposal summaries from both professionally affiliated and independent curators. Proposal summaries are being reviewed for consideration with regards to the exhibition planning for the months May – December 2010. Exhibitions will be held at the temporary home of BECA ICAD located at 527 St. Joseph Street, New Orleans, LA across from the Contemporary Arts Center.

AWP 2010

NewPages has just returned from AWP 2010 in Denver – WOW! Always such anticipation building up to it, getting ready for it, getting there, and then – whoosh – those three days go by so fast!

Our dearest gratitude to all of you who took the time to stop by the table to say hello and offer your support for our work. Your comments truly help to fuel our energy and keep our passions burning here. So often, day after day, behind the screen and keyboard, it does get a bit lonely and our minds sometimes trail into existential wanderings. But, AWP is our once-a-year reminder of how many of you there are who use the site and appreciate our tappings-away.

Thanks to all the exhibitors – lit mags, publishers, creative writing programs, and authors – who actually smiled in recognition when they saw us coming down the aisles with our NewPages t-shirts announcing our presence. And thanks to all our newly made friends in these endeavors – AWP is great for meeting new people in the “scenes”.

Thanks to reviewers – including Jennifer Sinor’s students – who stopped by. So nice to see the people behind all those thoughtful words.

Thanks to all the blog readers who mentioned how helpful this is. It is indeed a great deal of work, but work I love all the more when I know it is appreciated by others. “Heroic” was one word I will keep with me. Good to have a bit of an ego boost for when the beer fund runs low.

And speaking of beer fund…CODE ORANGE!

Denver was a blast, and Denver Pale Ale – or DPA – is certainly a brew I can recommend to visitors.

I will no doubt have more AWP comments intertwined in the blog in the days and months upcoming, but for now – time to get back into the NewPages groove (after a full night’s sleep!).

[Pictured: Part of the NewPages table exhibit. / The blue bear butt at the conference center as seen from the hotel. / The steady flow of the nearly 10,000 attendees. / The golden dome of the capitol building.]

Still Teaching Huck Finn

In Mr. Secino’s class, students said the book was valuable as a way of understanding history. “It reminds you that this (slavery) actually happened,” said Mariana Z. Peltier.

“It’s hard to believe that the Land of the Free was treating human beings like that,” said Conor E. Shea.

Idaresit O. Uko said the fact that Tom and Huck were, it turns out, trying to hide a slave who was already freed, is a metaphor for how the country was trying to keep blacks enslaved even after the Civil War.

Jonathan H. Sokolowski said the book reminds readers that, “You need to keep knowledge of the past so that you can move forward.”

Read the full story on Worcester’s telegram.com.

Alimentum Wants YOU on Video!

To celebrate April as National Poetry Month, Alimentum: The Literature of Food creates Menupoems. This year, they are inviting all of us to enjoy the full menu, and to share our feast of reading with others. Here’s how:

1. Print out our menupoem menu
2. Read a menupoem at your favorite restaurant
3. VIDEO your reading
4. Send it to Alimentum and you’ll appear on their website & Alimentum’s YouTube channel

Visit their screening room to see already completed videos

Here are our menupoets for 2010:

Walter Ancarrow
Lara Candland
Kim Goldberg
Catherine Harnett
Jen Karetnick
Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis
Mark Kurlansky
Paul S. Piper
Shweta Rao
Linda Simone
Emily Stokes
Alexis Weber
and menupoems editor Esther Cohen

Grain Contest Winners

Grain‘s new issue includes their new byline: The journal of eclectic writing. Grain’s Winter 2010 issue, TROPHY, features the winners of Grain‘s 21st Annual Writing Contest, judged by Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen (Poetry) and Elise Levine (Fiction). All seven winning entries are included, most notably the 1st and 2nd Prize fiction – Matthew Heiti and Marilyn Gear Pilling – and poetry winners – Danny Jacobs and Medrie Purdham.

Full details for Grain’s 2010 contest are available on their website and are published in the back of TROPHY.

New Lit on the Block :: Nashville Review

Nashville Review has made a huge splash in the web pond with their inaugural issue. Hailing from Vanderbilt University (edited by MFA students) NR was founded with two guiding principles: “that our venue would be inclusive to all forms of storytelling, and that it would be both free and available to everyone. Thus, NR seeks to feature those forms of writing not often recognized as literature—music, comics, film, creative nonfiction, oral storytelling, dance, drama, art—alongside the more traditional forms of fiction and poetry. It is published entirely online, and its readership includes visitors from over 50 countries.”

To uphold its end of the vision, NR’s first issue includes:

Fiction by Eric Sasson, John Minichillo, Pamela Main, and Peter Jurmu

Poetry by Rickey Laurentiis, Heather Derr-Smith, Yaul Perez-Stable Husni, Sarah Maclay

Music (Jukebox – some with video) by Efterklang, Jeff Harms, Nora Jane Struthers, Dark Dark Dark, Sufjan Stevens, Paul Epp, Tyler James, The Farewell Drifters, Symbion Project, Breathe Owl Breathe

Comics by Eric Garcia, Keiler Roberts, JooHee Yoon

Interviews with Salvador Plascencia, Maira Kalman, and Beth Bachmann

Nashville Review accepts submissions of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, comics, lyrics and audio by up-and-coming musicians.
Contributors are offered up to $100.

Nashville Review has three reading periods: Jan 1-Feb 1, May 1–June 1, and Sep 1–Oct 1.

Comics and music may be submitted at any time.

All submissions may be made through NR‘s online submissions manager.

Beltway Poetry Celebrates DC

Offering full online content, Beltway Poetry’s Literary Organizations Issue (11.2) is the fourth in a series of special issues documenting the rich literary history of Washington, DC. This issue celebrates groups and organizations (spanning from 1881 to the present) that have nurtured writers in the region, providing important places to gather, workshop, publish, learn, and read. The issue features:

Sarah Browning on DC Poets Against the War
Regie Cabico on DC Slam
Grace Cavalieri on “The Poet & The Poem”
Zachary Elkin on DC Scores
Julie R. Enszer on The Furies
Danielle Evennou on mothertongue
Sunil Freeman on The Writer’s Center
Brian Gilmore on Drum & Spear Bookstore
Gray Jacobik on The Capital Hill Poetry Group
Alan King on Karibu Books
Martin G. Murray on the Washington Friends of Walt Whitman
Kim Roberts on Bethel Literary and Historical Society
Kim Roberts on DC Poetry Anthologies
The Washington Post on Some of Us Press

Jobs & Residencies

Oxford University Press Higher Ed. Editorial Fall Internship, New York. April 26

Oxford University Press Editorial Assistant, New York.

The Committee on Creative Writing at the University of Chicago is accepting applications for a 3 year, renewable, lectureship (posting 00306). The effective date for this teaching appointment will be July 1, 2010.

The English Department of the State University of New York, College at Plattsburgh invites applications for a full-time tenure track Assistant Professor position in Creative Writing to begin Fall 2010. Materials received by April 12, 2010 will be guaranteed full consideration.

Lincoln Memorial University invites applications for the position of Writer-In-Residence.

The University of Cincinnati Department of English & Comparative Literature invites applications for a visiting position for the 2010-11 academic year. May 1

The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology offers three Writer-in-Residencies. April 9

The English Program at Penn State Altoona is taking applications for a one-semester teaching residency in fiction writing. Emerging Writer Residency, Dr. Thomas Liszka. May 17

Hempel Selects 21 Innovative Fiction Writers

The Alaska Quarterly Review Spring & Summer 2010 issue includes a special feature: “Innovative Fiction: 21 Writers,” Amy Hempel, Guest Editor. Her picks and works from each of the following fill the first hundred pages of the journal:

Patricia Lear
Lily Tuck
Mi Ditmar
Peter Markus
Paola Peroni
Daryl Scroggins
John Rybicki
Katie Arnold-Ratliff
Robert Lopez
Michael Ahn
Jamie Quatro
Nick Falgout
Megan Mayhew-Bergman
Anna DeForest
James Donovan
Patricia Volk
Christopher Kennedy
Timothy Liu
Joe Stracci
Julia Slavin
Bernard Cooper

Tiferet Prose Contest Winner

Richard P. Krepski’s prose contest winning essay “Center of the Universe” is published in the newest issue of Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature (Issue 13). “It is based on a chapter in Mr. Krepski’s forthcoming book, Alchemical Gold – Exploring Substance to Realize Spirit, targeted for publication later in 2010.”

Job :: Managing Editor Orion Magazine

Orion Magazine, a twenty-eight-year-old bimonthly concerned with nature, culture, and everything in between, seeks a managing editor to join our creative, hard-working, and somewhat irreverent team in producing six print issues a year as well as a variety of digital and multimedia content. Chief among the expectations of the managing editor are the ability to acquire and edit top-notch features and to actively participate in a visionary and wide-ranging editorial conversation. The managing editor is also responsible for editing print and online departments; orchestrating the meeting and line-up process; overseeing contracts and permissions, interns and freelancers; and ensuring clear and constant communication between editorial, marketing, development, and digital media.

The person we are looking to hire is organized yet flexible, earnest, outgoing, and fun-loving, a deep thinker capable of making significant contributions to a creative conversation, with the right measure of conscience and assertiveness to keep the magazine on track. A belief in the power of writing and an understanding of environmental thinking and writing are essential, as are enthusiasm for the marriage of print and digital products and the ability to independently take projects from start to finish. The successful candidate will have at least five years’ experience as a managing or senior-level editor for a reputable general-interest or literary magazine alongside a proven track record with acquisitions.

To apply, send a résumé, cover letter, three professional references, two magazine-length editing clips (both original and final, published text), and one unedited writing sample (not to exceed 2,000 words) to:

H. Emerson Blake
Orion
187 Main Street
Great Barrington, MA 01230

Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled. No phone calls or e-mails, please. Submitted materials will not be returned without a SASE.

Grants for Women in Film

Applications are now being accepted for the 2010 grant cycle for the WIF Foundation Film Finishing Fund. The application period is March 23 – April 30, 2010, with winners notified August 15, 2010. The Women In Film Foundation’s Film Finishing Fund (WIFF FFF) supports films by, for or about women by providing cash grants of up to $15,000 and in-kind services.

Reel Love

PoetrySpeaks Reel Love Poetry Film Contest: “Submit a poetry film based on what you consider to be the greatest poem about love. Share your artistic vision and love of poetry with us and our community! Whether you are in love with love, or screaming ‘to hell with love,’ we want you to express your vision in the Reel Love Poetry Film Contest.”

Contest Judges:
PoetrySpeaks Advisory Board
Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate
Anne Halsey, media director of Poetry Foundation
Jim Schley, managing editor of Tupelo Press
Bruce George, poet and co-founder of Def Poetry Jam (HBO)
Emily Warn, former editor-in-chief of the Poetry Foundation

CNF Gets a New Look

After 15 years of, Issue 38 of Creative Nonfiction is “a magazine,” taking on the larger, trade-size format on the outside, and on the inside, updated layout and design as well as expanded content: essays, columns, and more. Additionally, CNF will be adding exclusive online content for each issue. Check it all out here.

Audio :: Poets Weave

Poets Weave is five minute weekly poetry program (podcast and stream), broadcast on the NPR station WFIU, Bloomington, Indiana, featuring guest poets reading their own poems as well as poetry read by the host, Christopher Citro. Online audio archives contain 100s of shows, dating back to 2006. Recent shows include live readings by poets such as Ross Gay, Debra Kang Dean, and Alyce Miller.

If you are interested in more audio, podcasts and video, visit NewPages Guide to Multimedia.

Alimentum Poetry Contest Winner

The Alimentum Poetry Contest winning poems will be featured in the Summer 2010 issue. As selected by Contest Final Judge Dorianne Laux:

Winner “Substitutes” by Maya Stein
1st Runner-up “Before I tell him I am leaving” by Salita S. Bryant
2nd Runner-up “Water of Life” by Catherine Freeling

Our Poetry Contest Finalists:
“Rabanada” by Margaret K. Menges
“Cutlet” by Rhona McAdam
“Soup and Bread” by Mary McGinnis
“Ropa Vieja” & “Wine” by Ricardo Pau-Llosa

Ne’er Do Well Doing Well

Want to know how to get a literary magazine started, here might be a good person to ask: “The Ne’er Do Well founder and editor and superwoman extraordinaire Sheila Ashdown has really outdone herself. TNDW started out as a one-woman operation and thanks to a call for volunteers has grown to a staff of a half a dozen people. Issue No. 2 features the work of Eve Rosenbaum, Lacey Jane Henson, Maggie Morgan, Kara Weiss, Stephen D. Kelly, Jane Rosenberg LaForge and yours truly, former NewPages contributor, Dan Moreau.” Also available from TNDW is this funky-cool two-color, limited-edition 11×17 poster featuring the full text of Ryan Davidson’s “El Niño Walks Into a Bar” and a custom illustration by artist Keith Rosson. Signed, numbered, and “perfect for covering up a medium-sized hole in any wall in your home or business.” A simple seven bucks, shipping included. I ordered mine.

Sum of Every Lost Ship

It is very easy to lose yourself in the brave, lonely world of Allison Titus’s Sum of Every Lost Ship. Her spare and questioning aesthetic is pleasing, and her subjects bristle just enough to provide a wonderful chemistry. Throughout her poems, she maintains a careful beauty and distance, and she creates a unique world of displacement, longing, and ultimately, survival. Continue reading “Sum of Every Lost Ship”

Shoulder Season

Ange Mlinko’s previous books have earned her much praise and fanfare and it does seem like she deserves it. Her third book, Shoulder Season, is sharp, entertaining and engaging. Her poems are timely and important. There are very few poets who can accomplish this feat. She is grappling with the world as it is. The landscapes are chaotic but the messages are not didactic. Continue reading “Shoulder Season”

The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits

The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits is under a porch, is between the fridge and the cupboard, is hiding among the coats and sweaters in the tilted closet above the basement stairs. Its shapeshifting and heartbreak is nightmarishly microscopic and horrifically asymptotical. Continue reading “The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits”

Pulleys & Locomotion

Pulleys & Locomotion, Rachel Galvin’s first full-length collection, finds delicate grace balancing on that titular ampersand. As pulleys are a tool of motion and locomotion is movement itself, so this collection asks us to stop and consider not just the trajectory, but first what enables it to occur. Continue reading “Pulleys & Locomotion”

Where the Dog Star Never Glows

Tara Masih’s short fiction has appeared in a number of well known journals for over a decade now, but Where the Dog Star Never Glows is her first collection of fiction. It does not disappoint. With seventeen stories, variety is the best word to describe this slim volume. The settings range from colonial India, to present-day Dominica, to the ‘60s USA, with lots of side roads taken. Though the prose style is consistently traditional – form is played with only slightly, and reality is always, more or less, real – the characters, themes, and content vary pleasantly, creating a dynamic and interesting collection. Continue reading “Where the Dog Star Never Glows”

The Singer’s Gun

Anton Waker’s parents are dealers in stolen goods, and his devious cousin Aria recruits Anton’s help in setting up a business forging passports and social security cards. But all Anton wants is to be an ordinary corporate drone, living a simple, lawful life. He quits Aria’s business, gets himself a fake Harvard diploma and snags a job at Water Incorporated, determined to go straight. He gets engaged to a beautiful cellist with the New York Philharmonic and looks forward to a mundane, middle class existence. Continue reading “The Singer’s Gun”

100 Notes on Violence

“I almost fainted with desire and fear” writes Julie Carr in her 2009 Sawtooth Prize-winning 100 Notes on Violence, and in doing so sums up the experience of reading the 116-page collection. In fragments, lists, quotations, facts and chunks of prose, Carr offers up a reflection on not just violence, but on protecting ourselves and our innocence from it. Continue reading “100 Notes on Violence”

Dirty August

It’s an understatement to say that Edip Cansever isn’t very well known in poetry circles (whatever those are), nor any more so in the specialized area of Turkish literature. Reading the introduction to Dirty August will give you some helpful background on the latter, but to appreciate Cansever’s poetry one has only to peruse Julia Clare Tillinghast-Akalin and Richard Tillinghast’s translations. While I can’t vouch for their fealty to the native language – that would be an issue for a different kind of review, couched in quibbling over semantics – I can say that what Tillinghast fille et père have kindly bequeathed English language readers, through these eminently readable translations, is a beguiling peek into the work of a “Second New” wave poet (who died in 1986), one espousing a secular vision more philosophically aligned with European existentialism than with Ottoman empiricism. The Tillinghasts are long-time aficionados as well as scholars of Turkish idiom and culture, and their love for Cansever’s writing is readily apparent in this slim, yet potent volume. Continue reading “Dirty August”

Primeval and Other Times

For me, it’s rare for an author of fiction to accomplish “soul-touch,” but Olga Tokarczuk does just that with her captivating spiritual imagery and layers of characters that touch the heart-depths of readers’ imaginations. Primeval and Other Times is an award winning novel (first published in the 1990s) that takes place in a mystical Polish village guarded by four archangels through the 20th century. One particular passage woven within her mythical tale that stands out is almost a summarized subtext of Tokarczuk’s mastered, descriptive sensory writing style: Continue reading “Primeval and Other Times”

In the Presence of the Sun

In the Presence of the Sun brings N. Scott Momaday’s work to a new generation of readers. Momaday, a novelist and poet from the Kiowa tribe, combines the mainstream modernism of American poetry with an oral-language inspired reference to Kiowa and other Southwest Native American traditions, particularly the Navaho. Continue reading “In the Presence of the Sun”

Unsound

I must start here by proclaiming my love for the publishers of this book: Burning Deck Press. I have nothing but respect for the press and the great poets who run it. There are many presses operating today, but Burning Deck is refreshing for its consistent integrity and taste, and Jennifer Martenson's first full-length collection of poetry, Unsound, is another strong release. The politics of Martenson are well-thought out and exciting, and her poetic forms are fresh and unexpected. Most of the poems in the final section of the book have vivid imagery and a strong voice, though I do wonder if the poet occasionally relies too heavily on visual tricks rather than engaging language. Continue reading “Unsound”

Droppers

"But we have sensible reasons for not breaking out into the huge freedom of irregular shapes – once done we would no longer have the aid of our machines, tools and simple formulae." Steve Baer, a fellow-traveler of "the droppers," wrote these words in 1968 to describe the unorthodox architecture at Drop City, but the same quote can be applied in hindsight to the social experiments occurring there. Droppers provides a comparative look at Drop City and other communal ventures in America's past. Mark Matthews asserts that Drop City failed because it did not attempt to learn any lessons from past communes. The droppers intentionally charted out a new society without utilizing the "tools of history"; the commune took on an "irregular shape" that ultimately led to its destruction. Continue reading “Droppers”