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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!

Open City – Spring/Summer 2007

Having just edited a story anthology in which four contributors were poets by trade, I was particularly interested in reading this installment of Open City, which offers “prose by poets.” It’s a bit of a departure for this venue – if only because those accustomed to its steady professionalism will find the quality here to vacillate wildly. Continue reading “Open City – Spring/Summer 2007”

Opium – 2007

“Consider this the definitive statement of how to succeed in your life,” says the spine of Opium‘s fourth issue. Right under this is written, “What? No, that’s all we wanted to say.” Maybe this issue, subtitled “Live Well Now” will have too much slapstick and too many cheap jokes for my taste, I think before opening it. Before that thought settles, it’s erased. Easily the most zine-influenced journal I have ever read, Opium thrills me from cover to cover with its variety and is packed full of punch. This single issue is as thoroughly conceptualized as a Pink Floyd album, complete with background street sounds and stray barking dogs, even sparrows in the thirteenth layer of sound. The editorial statement “We promise it’s like nothing you’ve seen before, and better yet: we promise you’ll laugh,” is the truest one in the journal. A lineage of man follows, worth witnessing first-hand. Aptly enough, the first fiction is F. John Sharp’s “Primal Urges.” The editors share with us more information: “Estimated reading time: 5:59.” Continue reading “Opium – 2007”

Poetry – June 2007

Once yearly, Poetry eschews its commentary and letters sections to focus on its namesake; this year, the month chosen is June, and the result is not disappointing. Left to fend for itself, the poetry feels less intellectual, and more kinetic, than generally. Its strongest offerings are surrealist satires; David Biespel’s “Rag and Bone Man” struggles to fasten a trickster mask around a Literatus; Ralph Sneeden’s “Prayer as Bomb” provides vibrant satire in which explosives come to be seen as individualized elements of misplaced hope. Heidi Steidlmayer’s brief, deft “Scree” is worth citing in its entirety: Continue reading “Poetry – June 2007”

Poetry East – Spring 2007

Poetry East is a 220-page journal containing nothing but poetry and contributors’ notes. The journal often publishes theme issues, past themes including post-war Italian poetry, Finnish poetry, and issues dedicated entirely to Robert Bly, Muriel Rukeyser, and “Ammons/Bukowski/Corman.” I’d like to get my hands on some of those past issues. The current issue has no purported theme, but a majority of the poems would fit well with the past issue “Praise,” (Poetry East has actually published a Praise I and a Praise II) or with the forthcoming issue, “Bliss.” I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t care for praising or blissful poems, but this relatively thick journal seemed to me, taken as a whole, a bit too even in tone. A good many of the poems could have pushed the envelope a little more. Continue reading “Poetry East – Spring 2007”

The Sewanee Review – Spring 2007

In a world of the increasingly gritty, beyond-experimental, post-post-modern and devil-may-care, The Sewanee Review feels almost old-fashioned in its emphasis on clarity, craftsmanship, and quality. It was a treat to carry it around with me, leave it beside my bed, and, before falling asleep underline stand-out bits of analysis in critical essays. Christopher Clausen’s “From the Mountain to the Monsters” intrigued me from the opening lines: “Take nature as your moral guide, and before long you find yourself haunted by nightmares of monsters. The relation between cosmic nature and human ethical conduct was the most important intellectual problem of the nineteenth century.” Continue reading “The Sewanee Review – Spring 2007”

The Southern Review – Spring 2007

The Southern Review prides itself on excellence, on not letting the reader off the hook. This issue has three essays on “Mind and Metaphor,” none of which are an easy task to read, partly because each of will unsettle your preconceived notions of those two abstract concepts. Continue reading “The Southern Review – Spring 2007”

Sou’wester – Fall 2006

Two short stories in this issue of Sou’wester just knock me out: April Line’s “What It Would Be Like To Have a Baby With a Turnip” and Patricia Brieschke’s “Eat!” Both feature ordinary women as protagonists and both cover themes done before: the experience of pregnancy (Turnip) and self-starvation (Eat). Continue reading “Sou’wester – Fall 2006”

Yellow Medicine Review – Spring 2007

Though Yellow Medicine County in southwest Minnesota is home to the native Dakota People, the first issue of Yellow Medicine Review includes artists indigenous to places as distant as Papua, New Guinea and Australia. It’s expected that a journal with “Indigenous” in its title would have considerable negative references to the colonizing culture. As with most white American mutts – lineage too mixed to be certain of anything – I have enough Indian blood to be an embarrassment to the indigenous. Regardless of my whiteness, as a reader, the strongest pieces in this journal were not the ones condemning the past but those expressing the Indigenous experience as it is now. Continue reading “Yellow Medicine Review – Spring 2007”

ZYZZYVA – Spring 2007

Long before highbrow carpetbaggers followed the Silicon Valley free-market bubble west to begin San Francisco’s literary “reconstruction,” there was Howard Junker, the cantankerous eccentric who started Zyzzyva from scratch and clawed his way to a position where he could tell Thomas Pynchon’s agent to call Thomas Pynchon bad names. An original do-it-yourselfer, Junker reads every submission that comes through the transom; provides the email addresses of his contributors; even maintains one of the most informative literary blogs on the net. Junker’s reaction to foreign incursion, after several infamous softball skirmishes, has been exceptionally Southern: namely, he has continued publishing Zyzzyva almost exactly as before. Continue reading “ZYZZYVA – Spring 2007”

Still Time to Vote :: storySouth Million Writer Award

QUICK! Quick like a bunny! Get your vote in for the storySouth Million Writer Award for Fiction 2007. The top ten online stories have been selected and readers will choose the winner. To read the top ten stories and cast you vote, as well as read more about the award and the Notable Stories 2006 from which they were selected, visit storySouth. Voting ends June 30, 2007.

Ghost Bikes


“Beginning in June 2005, members of Visual Resistance have been creating small and somber memorials for New York City bicyclists killed by automobiles. Each time a biker is killed, a bicycle painted all white is locked to a street sign and a small stenciled plaque is bolted in place above it.The installations are meant as reminders of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, and as quiet statements in support of bikers’ right to safe travel. It was inspired by Ghost Bike Pittsburgh, which was in turn inspired by a similar effort in St. Louis. In recent months, Ghost Bikes have appeared in cities across the country, as well as in the UK.”

Read more about this movement as well as view an interactive map detailing Ghost Bike Memorials in NY.

Also on Visual Resistance: “How to make street art“

Submissions: Prick of the Spindle

“Prick of the Spindle is one of the few journals that publishes drama; we also publish fiction, nonfiction (creative and academic), poetry, and literary reviews. We are looking for well-written work with an eye for language, which may be traditional, experimental, or somewhere in between. In forthcoming issues, we will be publishing interviews with authors on writing practice and other writing-relating topics.”

New Novel by J.L. Powers

The Confessional by J.L. Powers
Another of NewPages contributors makes a big splash with this first novel. Call it Young Adult if you want to, but this book had me turning pages all night long. Definitely in the cross-over category of YA – content is VERY adult, but also VERY real to what so many of our nation’s “children” are witness to every day. This book can get any class of students wanting to read to the end and talking the whole way through about issues of terrorism, racism, classism, sexism (LOTS on the male side of this and the pressures placed on young men), homophobism, family, community, education and religion. Whew!. This book lacks for nothing in terms of topics, yet leaves so much to be discussed and explored.

Promo description:
Mexican guy. White guy. Classmates and enemies from across the border and on each other’s turf. Big fight. White guy wins. Next day, he’s dead. Everyone’s a suspect. Everyone’s guilty of something.

Does what you look like or where you come from finally determine where your loyalties lie? Who’s Us? Who’s Them? Which side is your side? Is it Truth?

Contemporary politics, the consequences of guys-being-guys, and questions about faith and personal responsibility pulse throughout the pages of this provocative, eloquent debut.

Published by Knopf, July 2007
ISBN: 978-0-375-83872-9 (0-375-83872-4)

Horowitz v. Nelson and Academic Freedom

Excerpts from: “Political Indoctrination and Harassment on Campus: Is there a Problem?”
Participants:
David Horowitz, Founder & President, Horowitz Freedom Center
Cary Nelson, President, American Association of University Professors.
Moderator:
Scott Smallwood, senior editor The Chronicle of Higher Education
March 2007

David Horowitz: Unfortunately, professors of English do rant against the war in Iraq in English classes, inappropriately and unprofessionally. And professors of Women’s Studies do conduct courses on globalization in which the only texts are Marxist tracts on the evils of the free-market, corporate system. “International feminism” is the non-academic, political rubric under which they discuss globalization. These Women’s Studies professors more often than not have PhDs in Comparative Literature or English literature, and have no professional qualifications whatsoever for teaching about the global economy.

Cary Nelson: My academic specialty happens to be modern American poetry. I began teaching contemporary American poetry in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War. I suppose I could have pretended that hundreds of American poets were not writing anti-war poetry, but that would hardly have been responsible; it wouldn’t have been to represent my subject matter fairly.

I found I could add a bit of color to my classes by describing what it was like to hear Allen Ginsberg read his poetry at an anti-war rally at the United Nations and before 10,000 armed bayoneted troops at the Pentagon. He read the poem Pentagon Exorcism Chant in front of the Pentagon with troops all pointing their bayonets at him on top of a flatbed truck, and I stood beside the truck. I didn’t hide the fact.

I now teach a week on September 11th poems where the poets’ political points of view are all over the map. But I have no problem telling my students when they read Imiri Baraka’s poem about September 11th that I think his belief that Israel knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand is nothing more than paranoid nonsense. I guess that’s a political opinion. I offer it.

[Read the rest here.]

Hate in America

The Year in Hate
Hate Group Count Reaches 844 in 2006
“Energized by the rancorous national debate on immigration and increasingly successful at penetrating mainstream political discourse, the number of hate groups in America continued to grow in 2006, rising 5% over the year before to 844 groups.”

Read more on this as well as view a Hate Groups Map of the U.S. which shows exactly what groups and where for each state (nothing like seeing how high your state ranks on this scale *sigh* – Dakotas anyone?): Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center

Britain’s Boycott of Israeli Academics

This foolish boycott will solve nothing: alienating academics will only add to problems
by Jonathan Freedland
“Academics in Britain are set to debate a boycott of their Israeli colleagues, in protest at Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Here, writing for the London Evening Standard, Index supporter Jonathan Freedland tells why he opposes any such move.”

Read the rest: Index for Free Expression

Sports Journalism and Transition

He Shoots, She Scores
When Mike became Christine, she gave Los Angeles sports fans a courtside view of gender politics.
By John Ireland
“For all of its trappings of money, fame, and corruption, professional sports has a lot to do with character. Avid sports fans seem to respect those who face up to overwhelming challenge and overcome adversity. So it should not come as a surprise that readers rose in solidarity when a 23-year veteran sports writer announced in the Los Angeles Times that he would return from a short hiatus…as a woman.”

Read the rest: In These Times.

YA Literature

Redefining the Young Adult Novel
By Jonathan Hunt

“…the crossover novel has continued to command its share of attention, and questions about the nature of the YA novel and its audience continue to be hotly debated. [. . .] In this new era of the crossover novel, publishers have had to make decisions about whether to publish certain books as YA titles or not. Obviously, publishers want their books to have the largest audience possible, and increased publicity in the form of awards and reviews can help a book find its audience and boost sales…”

Read the rest at: The Horn Book Magazine

Arlo Guthrie on Tour

Arlo Guthrie solo reunion tour starts in July
“Over the last four decades Arlo Guthrie has toured throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia winning a broad and dedicated following. In addition to being an accomplished musician—playing the piano, six and twelve-string guitar, harmonica and a dozen other instruments—Arlo is a natural-born storyteller whose hilarious tales and anecdotes are woven seamlessly into his performances.”

Read more about Guthrie’s career and get the full tour schedule at Honest Tune.

Poet-in-Residence Position

2008 Sandburg-Auden-Stein Residency
Olivet College, Michigan
Intensive Learning Term poet-in-residence program, April 29-May 16, 2008. An award of $3,100 (plus room and board) will be given to the 2008 resident poet. The Humanities Department faculty will evaluate the submissions and choose the winner. Poets who have published at least one book of poetry are eligible.

Submissions: Ghoti

Ghoti Magazine is now accepting submissions of essays, poetry, short stories, plays, etc for our special Labor Day issue. “We are looking for writing about work, about getting by in the daily grind. We are looking for writing about the working class. We don’t think the American worker gets the respect they/we deserve, so we’re dedicating a whole special issue to them/us.” For guidelines visit: Ghoti Guidelines.

Alternative Mailbag June 26

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political
Volume 32 Number 2, April-June 2007

Counterpoise: For Social Responsibilities, liberty and dissent
Volume 10 Number 3, Fall 2006

Corporate Responsibility Officer
Volume 2 Number 3, May/June 2007

fRoots: The Essential Worldwide Roots Music Guide
Number 289, July 2007

Humor Times
Issue Number 187, July 2007

In These Times
Volume 37 Number 7, July 2007
Why progressive graduates sell out / The pentagon’s contraception politics / Struggling with sports

Sierra: Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet
Volume 92 Number 4, July/August 2007

Virginia Quarterly Review Summer 2007


Last Photographs
by Ashley Gilbertson
with Joanna Gilbertson

Baghdad, March 2007

I didn’t want to go back.

When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go back, but I needed to—and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could satisfy.

Read the rest and see photographs at Virginia Quarterly Review.

Recycling Computers: The Who and the Why

From the you-can’t-even-make-this-stuff-up file of character study:

Normals Need Not Apply
by Francesca Mari

[. . .]”My workers,” Burgett says, “are all nutcakes, criminals, and druggies — reformed.” Then he corrects himself: “Some of them are still in reformation.” Burgett hires almost exclusively from drug treatment and psychiatric treatment centers. “We find that most of the time normals don’t fit in very well,” he says. “I don’t know if you want to look at it as me herding a group of freaks—think of it as a group of people who’ve formed nice symbiotic relation to the world they don’t understand.”

“I have had Jehovah’s witnesses working alongside transsexuals in the middle of their sex change operations. This is fun stuff,” Burgett says. “You can’t get this in the normal world.”[. . .]

Read the rest and more: Terrain Magazine, Spring 2007

Miranda July


If you haven’t been there yet, do stop by the website for her new book of short stories: No One Belongs Here More Than You.

In her inexorably and adorably unique fashion, Miranda has created a website of still images of her writing on a make-shift dry erase board: first using the top of her refridgerator, then moving to the stove. Take your time to go through the 31 stills. In one is a link to her site, but that can also be accessed directly: Miranda July.

And, certainly, if you haven’t seen it yet – Me and You and Everyone We Know is a must for summer movie viewing. The book? Still on my “Must Read” list; I’m just not there yet.

DZANC Prize for Work in Progress+

DZANC Books announces the inaugural DZANC Prize – a monetary award to a writer with both a work in progress, and an interest in performing some form of literary community service. The award itself will be a total of $5,000 to be distributed in two payments over the course of a twelve month period. The purpose of this prize is to give monetary aid to a writer of literary promise, in order to provide a budgetary cushion for them, allowing the author to concentrate his/her efforts on the completion of their work in progress. [more information]

Oh poop…


Poop Culture
How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product
By Dave Praeger
Foreword by Paul Provenza, director of The Aristocrats
Published by Feral House “This book is not a history of poop, but a study of today. Its goal is to understand how poop affects us, how we view it, and why; to appreciate its impact from the moment it slides out of our anal sphincters to the moment it enters the sewage treatment plant; to explore how we’ve arrived at this strange discomfort and confusion about a natural product of our bodies; to see how this contradiction-the natural as unnatural-shapes our minds, relationships, environment, culture, economics, media, and art.”

New Issue: Adirondack

Adirondack Review, Summer 2007
For your reading pleasure, another issue full of great writing, articles, and art, featuring the photography of Mary Robison, the illustrations of Jesse Hawley, writing from both seasoned and brand new writers, book reviews, film reviews, and a fascinating piece of travel writing about an American woman’s experiences with cheese vendors and effusive neighbors in Turkey.

Adopt a Tibetan Book

Dharma Publishing sponsors “Adopt a Tibetan Book program to fund the restoration of sacred Tibetan Buddhist texts and art. Annually, at the World Peace Ceremony in Bodh Gaya, India, the books and art are freely distributed to over eight thousand lamas, monks, nuns and lay people and also to over 3300 monasteries and educational institutions. The primary purpose is to rebuild libraries of the educational institutions of the Tibetan refugees in exile in India, Nepal, Bhutan.” The goal is to help reestablish these libraries in Tibet. [more information]

Soylent Green Anyone?

Wishing for What We Already Have
by Robin Nixon
Genewatch, May-June 2007
“This spring, 450 acres of Kansas will be planted with rice that has been modified to contain human genes. It will look much like any normal field of rice, but the biotechnological innovation within each stalk is being sold as if it were magic from the Land of Oz. Essentially, the Kansas field will be a factory. The machinery is the rice plant itself. The inputs are human genes. The outputs are human proteins — lactoferrin and lysozyme — normally found in breast milk and other secretions, such as tears…” [read more]

Out on Stage

Out Came the First Coming Out Play
by Laurence Senelick
The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, May-June 2007
“‘Outing’ in our sense comes on stage with the homosexual law-reform movements. In several German plays of the early twentieth century, characters are ‘outed’ involuntarily. From Ludwig Dilsner’s Jasmine Blossoms (1899) to Reinhart Kluge’s Who Is to Blame? (1923), the exposure of the protagonist’s homosexuality is effected by blackmail or vice-squad raids or the maneuvers of jilted lovers. It is a traumatic and embarrassing experience that blights one’s life. The upshot is almost invariably suicide. Although the goal of these plays was to enlighten the general public as to the sorry lot of those with ‘contrary sexual feelings,’ the effect upon the homosexual individual was probably a determination to stay under wraps.

It is therefore surprising to find a play about coming out, in the current sense, on the Dutch stage shortly after the First World War…” [read more]

Writer Residency: Lynchburg College, VA

Thornton Writer Residency at Lynchburg College, Spring 2008 semester. Eight-week residency with $8,000 stipend, housing, meals, and roundtrip travel expenses for a poet. Writers gives a weekly creative writing workshop and a public reading. Submit: copy of a previously published poetry collection, curriculum vitae, cover letter outlining successful teaching experience. No entry fee. Deadline: July 1. Lynchburg College, Thornton Writer Residency, English Dept., 1501 Lakeside Dr., Lynchburg, VA 24501.

New Issue: Big Ugly

It’s not ugly, but it is BIG!

The Big Ugly Review, Issue 6, “The Body Issue” includes:

Fiction by Peter Orner, Mary Kolesnikova, Wendy Van Landingham, Mark MacNamara, Kristina Moriconi, Chad Morgan, Angela Marino, RG McCartney, Sabrina Tom, Michelle Morrison

Non-fiction by Laura Fraser, Joe Loya, Derek Patton Pearcy, Mimi Ghez, Laura Barcella, Andy Raskin

Poetry by John M. Anderson, Amanda Field, Denise Dooley, Grey Held, Edward Smallfield

Music by Audrey Howard, Sez Giulian, Thomas Kilts, Vanessa Peters

Photo essays by Daniel Hernandez, Stephanie Gene Morgan

Film by Kia Simon (*the most absorbingly gorgeous four minutes you could spend staring at the computer today – trust me – open in your own player to watch full screen for best effect)

Whew! Big!

New Issue: Carve Magazine

The Carve Volume 8 Issue 2, Summer 2007

Hybrid
by Stephanie Dickinson
I’m looking at myself in the taxi’s side mirror. You will never get a kiss because you’re invisible, the mirror says, a glare of sun where my face should be…[Read more]

Samurai Bluegrass
by Craig Terlson
Their harmonies teeter on the edge of sweetness and mournful whine. It’s that high lonesome sound. The bluegrass band enraptures the pierced patrons, their ghost-white faces tilt toward the stage…[Read more]

Turning the Bones
by Marcy Campbell
Jillian and I are sitting on the hard-packed earth in front of a large fire, the flames illuminating the faces of the others in the circle. The air is saturated with the smell of spice, strong coffee and sweat…[Read more]

If You Don’t
by Rob Bass
When Ryan is four and Colleen is two, another toddler comes up to her in the sandbox and kicks over the upside down bucket mold she’s just finished patting down to perfection. She throws her hands up in the air and lets loose with a great wail and Ryan stomps over to push the offending party down into the sand…[Read more]

PEN American Opposes Cultural Boycotts

For more information contact: Larry Siems, (212) 334-1660 ext. 105

New York, NY, June 22, 2007—PEN American Center has released a statement of principle opposing academic and cultural boycotts, saying such actions threaten the internationally guaranteed right to freedom of expression.

The statement cites PEN’s commitment over many decades to the principle that knowledge, literature, art, and cultural materials belong to humanity as a whole and should circulate freely even in times of conflict and political upheaval, and declares PEN American Center’s opposition to “any efforts to inhibit the free international exchange of knowledge, literature, or art, including academic and cultural boycotts.” Academic and cultural boycotts harm free expression in both the targeted country and the country where the boycott is practiced, PEN contends, insisting that “the universally guaranteed right of all to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers includes the right to engage in direct, face-to-face discussions, debates, challenges, and collaborations.”

The statement follows a vote last month by the University and College Union in the United Kingdom to refer an appeal for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel to its membership for discussion and possible action. That vote has sparked an international debate over the ethics and efficacy of such boycotts.

“We felt it was important to articulate this essential principle at this time,” said Larry Siems, Director of Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center. “We commend this statement to our academic colleagues in the U.K. for their consideration, and to all who may be asked to consider similar measures now and in the future.”
————————————–
PEN American Center Statement on Academic Boycotts
PEN is an organization founded on the principle that the unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations is essential for human coexistence and understanding. It believes that literature, works of art, and ideas must remain common currency among people despite political or international upheavals, and that political and national passions should not prevent or interrupt intellectual and cultural exchange.

In this spirit, PEN American Center emphatically opposes any efforts to inhibit the free international exchange of literature, art, information, or knowledge, including academic and cultural boycotts. We believe that such boycotts threaten the free expression rights not only of those associated with the boycotted institutions but also of those in the countries where the boycott is practiced, and that the universally guaranteed right of all to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers includes the right to engage in direct, face-to-face discussions, debates, challenges, and collaborations.

PEN American Center
588 Broadway, Suite 303
New York, NY 10012
Tel. (212) 334-1660
Fax. (212) 334-2181
www.pen.org

New Issue: Contrary Magazine

The summer 2007 issue of Contrary Magazine features the prose poetry of wildlife biologist Patrick Loafman, whose eye for the natural captures the magical. Poetic prose is Contrary’s specialty, and you’ll find more examples in stories by Thomas King (of McSweeney’s and The Believer), Sarah Layden, and Amy Reed. We also have new poetry by C.E. Chaffin, Derek Pollard, Taylor Graham, and Patrick Reichard.

In other news from Contrary:
A poem by Contrary Poetry Editor Shaindel Beers won first place in the Dylan Days Festival, honoring Bob Dylan, in Hibbing Minnesota. Her poem “Rewind” surpassed about 400 poems from 250-300 poets from almost every state and most continents.

Two Contrary contributors have new books out: Mary E. Mitchell’s novel Starting Out Sideways (St. Martin’s Press), and Corey Mesler’s winner of the Southern Hum Chapbook Competition,The Lita Conversation.

Kelly Spitzer: Writer Profile Project

From Kelly Spitzer, currently with Smokelong Quarterly:

“Starting on March 1st, I will be launching the Writer Profile Project. Each profile will consist of approximately ten questions posed to writers at various stages in their careers. During the series, you will meet editors of literary magazines, novelists, poets, and a wide variety of up and coming authors in all genres. I expect the series to run through the end of the year, so check back often for new profiles.”

Profiles to date: Mary Akers, Hobart editor Aaron Burch, Kathy Fish, Alicia Gifford, Ellen Meister, Fleur Bradley, SmokeLong Quarterly founder Dave Clapper, Ann Walters (Sharon Hurlbut), Jason Makansi, Mary Miller, Jeff Landon, Jason Shaffner, NO

Punk Planet Ceases Publication

“Dear Friends,
As much as it breaks our hearts to write these words, the final issue of Punk Planet is in the post, possibly heading toward you right now. Over the last 80 issues and 13 years, we’ve covered every aspect of the financially independent, emotionally autonomous, free culture we refer to as “the underground.” In that time we’ve sounded many alarms from our editorial offices: about threats of co-optation, big-media emulation, and unseen corporate sponsorship. We’ve also done everything in our power to create a support network for independent media, experiment with revenue streams, and correct the distribution issues that have increasingly plagued independent magazines. But now we’ve come to the impossible decision to stop printing, having sounded all the alarms and reenvisioned all the systems we can. Benefit shows are no longer enough to make up for bad distribution deals, disappearing advertisers, and a decreasing audience of subscribers.”

Read more as to why and what next: Punk Planet

Interesting Times for Lit Mags

Interesting indeed, given the number of lit mags currently in editorial and financial flux, as noted in the Virginia Times Quarterly Blog. Magazines mentioned include Ploughshares, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Granta, Paris Review, The Antioch Review, and most notably (for their unique response) McSweeny’s, facing $130,000 debt has turned to an online auction to raise money (a guided tour of the Daily Show with John Hodgman is still availaible – but hurry).

Making Poetry Submissions

From Chris Hamilton-Emery’s 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: The Salt Guide to Getting and Staying Published

Becoming a Player
The world of poetry is not a world of isolated individual practitioners. Hermits in their caves. If you currently find yourself in this position, you should try to get out more. The world of poetry is a very busy place, filled with a wide range of professionals most of whom are eager to tell you about their talents.

The world of poetry is not filled with gentle suffering creatures (to call upon Eliot). It is not fair, just, or particularly caring. It can be supportive, but it is not a self help group. It is not a world based upon power sharing. In fact, the world of poetry can be a bear pit, and like any industry it is competitive and has moments of confrontation and even dirty tricks. Be prepared to take some knocks along the way.

Read the rest – including “50 dos and don’ts” – on Salt Publishing.

Prose: Sheheryar Sheikh

By one of NewPages contributors, Sheheryar Badar Sheikh:

-struck life
I.
Watch the walk, especially the strut, jingle. Hear the curious tinktink of coins, metallic sound in his pocket like rhythm. He lingers in air, suspended, arced in step suspended still in air suspended like air like substance in air. The god in him set to roast out the truth and go deeper until evaporation, until rain. Broad shoulders, cool expanse swarthy balmy calm sea, his shoulders the morph of a sun’s arc. Hear jingle, see arcs, see strut, see rhythm in flesh, the timing. Sunchoked sun split sunblonde, dancer in walks sunkissed. Almost god, mostly sun, younger brother of the murderer.

Read the rest: Cricket Online Review

New Issue: Raving Dove


Raving Dove is an online literary journal dedicated to sharing thought-provoking writing, photography, and art that opposes the use of violence as conflict resolution, and embraces the intrinsic themes of peace and human rights.

Summer 2007 Contributors: Martha Braniff, Howard Camner, Sharon Carter, DB Cox, Arlene Distler, Michael Estabrook, Joachim Frank, David V. Gibson, Cory Hutcheson, John Kay, Laurel Lundstrom, Caroline Maun, Beverly Mills, Russell Reece, Anthony Santella, Dorit Sasson, Sarah Shaw, Roger Singer, Townsend Walker, Harry Youtt, Changming Yuan

Published in February, June, and October, Raving Dove welcomes original poetry, nonfiction essays, fiction, photography, and art. See submissions guidelines for complete details. Now reviewing work for the winter 2007 edition, which will be online on October 21st.

New Contests Posted

I have been updating our contest pages every couple of days. These are contests for single works in all genres for publication in literary magazines (see Lit Mag Contests), both in print and online, as well as book contests.

The contests listed on NewPages are those sponsored by literary magazines (print), online literary magazines, alternative magazines, book publishers and creative writing programs that are listed on our site.

If you have a request to see a contest listed, please e-mail newpagesdenise@hotmail.com with information about the contest.

M. Allen Cunningham’s Newest Novel


A former contributor to NewPages, we’re happy to announce Mark’s second novel published with Unbridled Books: Lost Son about the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, author of “Letters to a Young Poet” and “The Duino Elegies.”

“Spanning Western Europe from 1875 to 1917, LOST SON brings alive the intellectual and artistic currents that shaped the 20th century and the personalities that made this history their own–from Rainer Maria Rilke himself to the great sculptor Rodin to the fascinating Lou Andreas-Salome, mistress or confidant of Rilke, Freud and Nietzsche. The result is an exploration of the forever imperfect loyalties we face in life and the seemingly immeasurable distances that can separate life and art.”

Beginning Monday June 4, Cunningham will be reading at bookstores in Northern California, Oregon, and Seattle. View the event schedule at his author blog here.

Congrats Mark!