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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!

Where to Submit Round-up: April 15, 2022

And just like that April is half over with. Don’t let the stretches of nice weather stop you from writing and editing your work. Keep your submissions goals going strong. To help, here is a round-up of calls for submissions and writing contests featured on NewPages. Don’t forget newsletter subscribers get a first look.

Do you know what else newsletter subscribers get? First access to our monthly eLitPak newsletters. Our April eLitPak was emailed to subscribers on Wednesday. You can view it here. Don’t forget to subscribe for more!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: April 15, 2022”

Magazine Stand :: Valley Voices – 22.1

Valley Voices literary magazine cover image

Valley Voices: A Literary Review 22.1 is a special issue on “The Sense of Place” dedicated to Dr. Marla Cowie (1942-2021), former Professor of English and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at Mississippi Valley State. It begins with a special feature with several works by and an interview with Elaine Terranova. The issue is filled with poetry by Angela Ball, Lois Baer Barr, Matthew Brennan, David Dear, George Drew, Theodore Haddin, Juliet Hinton, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Steve Myers, Mamie Osborne, Charles Rammelkamp, Anina Robb, Kelly Talbot, Larry D. Thomas, Susan Weaver, and Michael P. Wright, and includes prose works by Bob Chikos, Gary Fincke, Jacqueline St. Joan, DC Berry, and Jon Peede. Front cover photograph, “Hongmei 120 Folding Camera” by John Zheng.

Magazine Stand :: Humana Obscura – Issue 4

Humana Obscura literary magazine cover image

The Spring/Summer 2022 issue of Humana Obscura – an independent nature-focused literary magazine – features work by 84 new, emerging, and established contributors from around the globe, as far as South Africa, United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Australia, the Cayman Islands, Germany, and throughout North America. Contributors include Melanie Shoeniger, Susan G. Sancomb, Byron Wilson, Andre Peltier, Jaqi Holland, Kimberly Kling, Roger Camp, Ian William L., Meg Venter, Maureen Bennett, Genevieve Leavold, and more. Available to read online or order a print copy.

Book Review :: Walking with Aletheia: A Survivor’s Memoir by Jean Hargadon Wehner

Walking with Aletheia A Survivor's Memoir by Jean Hargadon Wehner book cover image

Guest Post by Bruce Mason

Netflix’s The Keepers – which was released five years ago in 2017 — follows the investigation into the 1969 death of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a Baltimore nun and former Archbishop Keough High School teacher, by a group of investigators including her former students. Her murder remains, to this day, unsolved, but members of her community believe she was killed to cover up Keough’s allegedly rampant clergy sex abuse, which was brought to light in the ’90s. One abuse victim previously known as “Jane Doe” is at the center of it all. “Doe” has since come forward publicly, leading many to wonder: What is Jean Hargadon Wehner doing now?

Continue reading “Book Review :: Walking with Aletheia: A Survivor’s Memoir by Jean Hargadon Wehner”

New Book :: Plainchant

Plainchant by Eamon Grennan book cover image

Plainchant
Poetry by Emon Grennan
Red Hen Press, June 2022

Grennan’s new collection shows again his powers of close, patient, plainspoken observation. Whether his gaze falls on the dash of a hare, dive of a gannet, heavy stillness of a rain-flecked cow, the song of a lark, or the scurry of an ant across a page of Celan, the poem that emerges is a celebration of the momentary fact, how a particular detail can, when sufficiently attended to, glow with the truth of its own unrepeatable self. Set mostly in the landscape of coastal Connemara, these poems can also bring to vivid life a painting by Bonnard, a family walk, a childhood memory, a chance encounter, a man scything a field, or a brief probing of the work of Beckett.

Contest :: The Magpie Award for Poetry Closes Soon!

Screenshot of Pulp Literature's flyer for the Magpie Award for Poetry 2022
click image to open PDF

Deadline: April 15, 2022
The Magpie Award for Poetry is for previously unpublished poems up to 100 lines in length. Poetry that relies on visual structure is eligible for prize money but may be excluded from publication if the formatting is difficult to reproduce. $500 prize. Entrants receive a 1-year digital subscription to Pulp Literature. Fee: $25 1st poem, $10 each subsequent poem. Deadline: April 15, 2022. View website.

Contest :: Cow Creek Chapbook Prize 2022

Cow Creek Chapbook Prize poetry chapbook contest logo

Deadline: May 15, 2022
The Cow Creek Chapbook Prize is a poetry chapbook contest brought to you by Pittsburg State University. We’re open to all styles and subjects. As long as the poems challenge and capture the imagination, we want to see them. Submit a manuscript of 15 to 30 pages by May 15 at www.cowcreekchapbook.org. This year’s guest judge is Chen Chen.

Magazine Stand :: West Trade Review – Volume 13

West Trade Review literary magazine cover image

The Spring 2022 issue of the annual print edition of West Trade Review includes fiction by Jessica Denzer, Sam Asher, Roger Topp, and Elizabeth Childs; poetry by Luke Johnson, Melissa Ginsburg, Jordan Charlton, Dare Williams and Kara Knickerbocker; Creative Nonfiction by Les Brady, Shanisha Branch, Thomas Kevin O’Rourke, Sarah Edmonds, and Sandra Hager Eliason; Visual Art by and interviews with Kelechi Nwaneri, Tania Nneji, and Segun Aiyesan – and this is just a small sampling of the contents, some of which are available to read online. Cover image: “Flooded Apartment 3” by Kelechi Nwaneri.

Call :: Able Muse Winter 2022/2023 Issue

cover of literary magazine Able Muse

Deadline: July 15, 2022
Don’t forget Able Muse is currently accepting submissions for their forthcoming issue, Winter 2022/2023. Submit poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, art, and photography. Submission opens yearly January 1 and closes July 15. Read their guidelines and submit at www.ablemuse.com/submit/.

New Book :: Bassinet

Bassinet poetry by Dan Rosenberg book cover image

Bassinet
Poetry by Dan Rosenberg
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

Dan Rosenberg’s third collection moves from loss into parenthood, exploring the roles of husband and father: their limits, their possibilities, and how they intersect with the wider world. Grounded in the familial, these poems wrestle with the political and the ecological, with heritage and hope, reimagining the breadth of home and what it means for one man to raise another to love it.

Magazine Stand :: Neon – Issue 54

Neon Literary Magazine Issue 54 cover image

Issue 54 of Neon Literary Magazine is full of stories of strange transformations and surreal futures. Readers will be taken to visit the sinister Ministry of Literature, contemplate the lives of gay frogs, ride along on the travels of the Shadow Man, and drop into a world where people can become animals in more ways than one. A selection of short stories and poems are supplemented by a haunting graphic short story by Dante Luiz and H Pueyo. The issue features works by Fiona Jefferson, Cole Brayfield, Jennie E Owen, Isabelle Marie Flynn, Devon Moody, EN Auslender, Beth Booth, Blair Hurley, Lauren Everdell, Dante Luiz & H Pueyo, Bree Wernicke, Rhonda Parrish, Ruth Niemiec, and Su Ryder. Neon is pay-what-you-want to download, and costs just £8.00 for a physical copy. In its perfect-bound format, each issue is around 90 pages and is photo-illustrated in black and white.

New Book :: You’ve Got Something Coming

You've Got Something Coming by Jonathan Starke book cover image

You’ve Got Something Coming
Fiction by Jonathan Starke
Black Heron Press, April 2020

A title you may have missed at the start of the pandemic, You’ve Got Something Coming is worth a throwback look. This breakthrough debut novel is about a down-and-outer and his small daughter and his attempt to give them a better life. Trucks, an aging boxer with only thirty dollars, breaks his deaf daughter, Claudia, out of a children’s home in Wisconsin one night during the dead of winter. He gives her used hearing aids, and they begin hitchhiking to Nevada. Claudia is a winsome, feisty little girl who tries to hold her father to account, and Trucks loves her unconditionally. Claudia’s mother, an addict, has disappeared and is likely dead.

Continue reading “New Book :: You’ve Got Something Coming”

Contest :: Swan Scythe Press 2022 Chapbook Contest

Swan Scythe Press logo

Deadline: June 15, 2022 (postmark)
Don’t forget Swan Scythe Press’ 2022 poetry chapbook contest is currently accepting entries. $18 fee. We are accepting submissions of unpublished poetry collections through June 15 (postmark deadline). Winner receives $200, publication, and 25 perfect-bound chapbooks. The 2021 winner was Rae Gouirand for Little Hour. For full submission guidelines, visit www.swanscythepress.com.

Story Foundation Prize Winner 2022

“Stuck” by Laura Venita Green of New York, New York, is this year’s winner of the third annual Story Foundation Prize. Her story will be featured in the Story summer 2022 issue, which will be released in June.

Story Editor-in-Chief Michale Nye says this about the winning entry: “Green’s story is about a young woman named Tess, who is struggling with alcohol (to put it mildly) and babysitting two children for the weekend while their father is out of town. Then, a mysterious and peculiar Evangelical girl comes in from the woods. It gets stranger from there. It’s a rich, peculiar story that stood out for its evocative characters and wonderful tension throughout the narrative. A truly unforgettable story that I know you’re going to love reading.”

Continue reading “Story Foundation Prize Winner 2022”

Magazine Stand :: Willow Springs – Issue 89

Willow Spring literary magazine cover art

Based out of Spokane, Washington, the newest issue of the biannual Willow Springs features poetry by Dan Albergotti, E. Kristin Anderson, Anne Barngrover, Thomas Brush, Elena Castro-Oliva, Dorsey Craft, Danielle Hanson, Julie Hensley, Karah Kemmerly, Alyse Knorr, David Dodd Lee, Tessa Livingstone, Andrew Rahal, Andy Sia, Michael Spence, John Struloeff, Elizabeth Vignali, Mekiya Walters; fiction by Andrew Furman, Adam Peterson, Sik Chuan Pua, Nickalus Rupert; nonfiction by Amanda Gaines, Maya Jewell Zeller; and an interview with Ada Limón. I’ve Been Told It Could Be Worse, oil on panel by Alexis Trice is the hauntingly gorgeous cover art. Some content is available to read online accompanied by author audio readings.

New Book :: Conscious Designs

Conscious Designs novella by Nathanial White book cover image

Conscious Designs
Novella by Nathanial White
Miami University Press, May 2022

Nathanial White’s speculative fiction explores the human psyche, physical disability, culture, technology, and consumerism. In this new work, Eugene, a wealthy paraplegic, must decide whether to preserve his consciousness forever in a digital utopia or suffer the pain tormenting his existence. Yet the more he learns about digital replication, the more deeply he understands personhood, empathy, and the value of suffering.

Magazine Stand :: Palooka – Issue 12

Palooka Issue 12 literary magazine cover image

Still thriving well into a dozen years of continuous publication, the newest issue of Palooka includes fiction by B. B. Garin, Nicole Sellew, and Arthur Klepchukov; poetry by Kaitlinn Rose, Troy Schoultz, and Deven Philbrick; nonfiction by Andrea Bianchi; and artwork, including this gorgeous cover art, by Bianca Rivetti Burattini. Palooka editors welcome writers around the globe to send their best unpublished fiction, poetry, nonfiction, artwork, photography, graphic narratives, and comic strips.

Who Wants Free Feedback?

Chestnut Review logo

Don’t we all? One way to get it is by following Chestnut Review on Twitter and retweeting their #freefeedbackfriday post on the first Friday of each month. Everyone who does so will enter a drawing to win a free critique on your submission. Chestnut Review just opened submissions for their Autumn Issue (October release), so now is a great time to try polish up your work and try your luck for free feedback!

New Book :: Question from Outer Space

Questions from Outer Space by Diane Thiel book cover image

Question from Outer Space
Poetry by Diane Thiel
Red Hen Press, May 2022

The newest collection of works by Diane Thiel explores fresh and often humorous perspectives that capture the surreal quality of our swiftly changing lives on this planet. The poems travel through questions on many fronts, challenging assumptions and locating unique angles of perception. These poems reflect a deep engagement with the natural world, a questioning of our built systems, the expansive wilderness of parenting, and the complexities of navigating outer and inner space.

Magazine Stand :: Cutleaf – Issue 2.7

Cutleaf logo

In the newest issue of Cutleaf online journal of short stories, nonfiction, and poetry, Brett Biebel shows readers what happens when one pays close attention to roadside attractions (or distractions) in two flash pieces, “Minnesota Miracle Man” and “In the Offing.” E. M. Mariani explores the truth of a long-ago admission and the mixed blessings of motherhood in “Mother’s Teeth.” And Linda Parsons examines the conditions under which light comes and to what degrees it can be observed in three poems beginning with “The Light around Trees in the Morning.” This issue features stills from the 1924 silent film The Hands Of Orlac, directed by Robert Wiene and starring Conrad Veidt. The film is one of the first to depict transplantation as a moral and artistic conundrum.

Magazine Stand :: Arc Poetry Magazine – 97

Arc Poetry Magazine cover image

The newest issue of Arc Poetry Magazine celebrates 20 years of the Diana Brebner Prize with poems and retrospectives by twenty past winners, giving readers a look back on winning poems and the impact Brebner left. As Arc’s prose editor Nancy Jo Cullen says, Brebner’s work demonstrates “Community and legacy in action.” This issue also focuses the “How Poems Work” section and new essays on Brebner and her work. Contributors include John Barton, Stephanie Bolster, S. Lesley Buxton, Blaine Marchand, Una McDonnell, and Anita Lahey. Poetry from Arc’s 2020-2021 Poet-in-Residence Jim Johnstone and his mentees Michael Prior, Amanda Merpaw, Taylor Zantingh, Lucy Yang, Janetter Platana, Sarain Keeshig-Soonias, and Joseph Kidney are included as well.

New Book :: Behind the Tree Backs

Behind the Tree Backs poetry by Iman Mohammed translated by Jennifer Hayashida book cover image

Behind the Tree Backs
Poetry by Iman Mohammed
Translated by Jennifer Hayashida
Ugly Duckling Presse, March 2022

Behind the Tree Backs investigates a poetics of remembrance through senses that hover just below and just above the skin. The text excavates war and displacement through a constellation of animate memories carved out of deep pleasure as well as brutality, the ancient and the institutional, the everyday and the geopolitical. The book insists on a poetics that recall through vibrating auratic fields, violence, love, and sexuality; these sensations tremble and cohere in a musical and tightly composed lyric.

Magazine Stand :: Jewish Fiction .net Issue 30

Jewish Fiction .net logo

The newest issue of Jewish Fiction .net is the Pesach issue, which contains the publication’s first stories translated from Greek and Portuguese to add to the numerous other language translations they have featured over the years, and now publishing over 500 stories! This issue also includes 16 stories originally written in Greek, Portuguese, Czech, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. To honor the recent holiday, 3 stories are about Pesach: “The Bread of Freedom,” “The Passing of Passover,” and “Leaving Egypt (Passover 5752).” Readers can find works by Nurit Zarchi, Richard Zimler, Ida Maze, Michel Fais, Luize Valente, Anne (Hannah) Viderman, Eldad Cohen, Irena Dousková, and many more. All available to read free online.

Magazine Stand :: Poetry – April 22

Poetry magazine cover image

Available in print and fully online, Poetry, the “oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world,” celebrates National Poetry Month with an issue devoted to “exophonic” authors – “those who write in a language not generally regarded as their first or mother tongue” (Wiki). The contributors in this issue include Dunya Mikhail, Ilya Kaminsky, Dong Li, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Michael Dumanis, Jila Mossaed, Laura Theis, Mónica De La Torre, Johannes Göransson, Sawako Nakayasu, Ukata Edwardson, Amlanjyoti Goswami, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Jack Jung, Ahmad Almallah, Armen Davoudian, Hiromitsu Koiso, Suphil Lee Park, Marina Dora Martino, Hajar Hussaini, Farid Matuk, Khaty Xiong, Shash Trevett, Ida Börjel, Lehua M. Taitano, Zêdan Xelef, Emi Miyaoka, Javier Zamora, Somto Ihezue, Abdulkareem Abdulkareem, Mayowa Oyewale, Don Mee Choi, Atar Hadari, Öykü Tekten, Sara Abou Rashed, Tino Zhang, Lynn Xu, Jeffrey Angles, Aldo Amparán, Sasha Pimentel, Dani Charles, Valzhyna Mort, and Moriana Delgado.

New Book :: Chambers of the Heart

Chambers of the Heart speculative fiction by B. Morris Allen book cover image

Chambers of the Heart
Speculative Fiction by B. Morris Allen
Plant Based Press, April 2022

What happens when an Oregon-based biochemist turned activist turned lawyer turned foreign aid consultant starts penning speculative fiction? In the case of B. Morris Allen, it’s a new collection of stories featuring a heart that’s a building, a dog that’s a program, a woman who’s sinking irretrievably – stories about love, loss, and movement. Allen is also the author of the dark fantasy novel Susurrus and editor of Metaphorosis, a weekly online magazine of “beautifully written” speculative fiction.

Magazine Stand :: Carve – Spring 2022

Carve Honest Fiction literary magazine cover image

The newest issue of Carve: Honest Fiction offers readers fiction from Laura Perkins, Madison Cyr, Anna Stacy, and Elizabeth Hamilton; poetry from Taylor Supplee, Bradley Samore, T.E. Nordklev, and Justin Hunt; nonfiction from Shanta Lee and Abigail Ham; 2021 Prose and Poetry Contest winners Haley Rose Hanks, Carling McManus, and Hannah Hindley; and fun features like “Decline/Accept” with Garrett Candrea; “One to Watch” with Zaina Arafat by Anna Zumbahlen; illustrations from resident artist Justin Burks, and interviews. Carve is open to preorders for each issue as well as subscription rates.

New Book :: Over the Moon…Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini

Over the Moon…Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini Poetry by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt book cover image

Over the Moon…Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini
Poetry by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt
Palooka Press, December 2021

SUNY New Paltz Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s poetry chapbook Over the Moon…Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini brings new light to the complicated life of Bess Houdini and gives voice to this stunning and admirable woman. The collection opens with the biography of Bess Houdini, a class magician in her own right, but sidelined as her husband’s helpmate as his career took the limelight. Following his unexpected death, Bess Houdini attempted many times to restart her career, as well as to connect with her dead husband through séance. In her author’s note, Schmidt explains her research approach to studying the Houdinis and her creation of Bess Houdini’s “state of mind, perspective, and experience” through her poems as “an expansion of the biographical fact.” She further explains, “It is my hope that these poems bring Bess from the margins to the center of the narrative of the great Houdini. For Bess shouldn’t be relegated to being another invisible woman standing in the shadow of the great artist or genius. This volume gives Bess Houdini the space and chance to speak.” It behooves us all to read and breathe life into this effort.

Magazine Stand :: Memoir Magazine – March 2022

memoir magazine cover

Accepting submissions of nonfiction, art, photography, reviews, interviews, audio, and video on a rolling basis, the mission of Memoir Magazine “is to be a witness to both factual and emotional truths that resonate with the human heart by supporting writers and artists in sharing their stories.” Memoir Magazine offers online writing classes and workshops, including the upcoming “Writing to Heal with Jerry Waxler” and “MeToo Anonymous Writing Workshop for Sexual Assault Survivors.” The publication keeps its site updated with new content added regularly. Some recent features include “Iris on My Mind” by Odeta Xheka, “The Hope of Better Hearing Aids” by Rosann Tung, “The Sentencing” by Wendy Swift, “Into the Racial Divide, A Story of Hope” by Jerry Waxler, “Walking Home” by Kate Zobel, “Main Street Madness” by Mary McBeth, “Permission” by Diane Gillespie, “Harrowing” by Natalie Coufal, “True Crime” by Hilarie Pozesky, and “How I Discovered America” by Sharmila Voorakkara. Memoir Magazine is a black-owned and woman-owned annual print and online publication.

New Book :: The End of Horses

The End of Horses poetry by Margo Taft Stever book cover image

The End of Horses
Poetry by Margo Taft Stever
Broadstone Books, April 2022

In the title poem from this new collection from Margo Taft Stever, she writes “from the end / of the time zone” where “nothing survived / after the horses were slaughtered,” a catastrophe for which no one knows whom to blame, but “The generals / and engineers pucker / and snore on the veranda.” Stever thus offers up a fable of man-made ecological disaster that is in every sense the work of a mature writer, one who has lived long and witnessed much, and who has mastered her craft, here placed in the service of the environment. She devotes much concern to animals – including a discourse on beavers – but her primary subject is humans, and her purpose is to provide readers with cautionary tales on the necessity of ethical living.

Book Review :: House Bird by Robb Fillman

House Bird by Robb Fillman book cover image

Guest Post by Ron Mohring

Reading the poems in House Bird by Robb Fillman, I’m struck first by the conditional, how often the poems express hesitation: “as if,” “almost,” “half-believing,” “grip of hesitation.”

But it’s not doubt the voice expresses, but possibility:

“Then I imagine / what I would do differently” (“Toast”)
“He imagined the way he’d trail them” (“Summer Ending”)
“I see / that what they were offered was not quite / real” (Doo Wop Dream”)

This collection is deeply grounded in familial attachments, in parenthood and the small moments of daily life in and around the home (“My son’s hesitant Yes”) (“Promises”), moments made larger by Fillman’s attention, expanded by his imagination, so that what at first might seem tentative — “Probably by now, my friend / has recovered” (“Witness”) — reveals itself to be the product of close and sustained attention and imagination, the impulse to not only get it down, but to get it right. A fine debut.

House Bird by Robb Fillman. Terrapin Books, February 2022.

Reviewer bio: Ron Mohring is the founding editor of Seven Kitchens Press. His new poetry collection, The Boy Who Reads in the Trees, is forthcoming in 2023 from The Word Works. 

New Book :: Singing at High Altitude

Singing at High Altitude poetry by Jennifer Markell book cover image

Singing at High Altitude
Poetry by Jennifer Markell
Main Street Rag Publishing, November 2021

Jennifer Markell‘s work has appeared in publications including The Bitter Oleander, The Cimarron Review, Consequence Magazine, RHINO, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Women’s Review of Books. She serves on the board of the New England Poetry Club and is a long-standing member of the Jamaica Pond Poets. For the past twenty years, Jennifer has worked in community mental health and as a psychotherapist.

Continue reading “New Book :: Singing at High Altitude”

Magazine Stand :: Ruminate – Issue 61

Ruminate literary magazine cover image

After hurdling the pandemic paper shortage and understaffing at the printers, the Winter 2021-2022 issue of Ruminate is in the mail! Themed “Beginnings and Endings,” the issue features poems by Arah Ko (the 2021 poetry-prize winner), Christine Swint (runner-up), Jane Medved (honorable mention), and work from four additional finalists: Brian Holmes, Jed Myers, Bethany Swann, and Margaret Wack, as well as poems from Kim Garcia, Londeka Mdluli, Tyler Smith, Sarah Snyder, and Phillip Watts Brown. Fiction includes works by Catey Miller, Tega Oghenechovwen, and Fei Sun, and nonfiction “Friendship: A Haiku” by Cynthia Gralla. Some content is available to read on the Ruminate website. There’s also still time to make the May 1 deadline for their 2022 annual poetry contest. Maybe it will be your name here next year!

Where to Submit Round-up: April 8, 2022

This being the first full week of April makes it even harder to believe next week April is half over with already. Don’t let these deadlines pass you by! Keep your submission goals going strong.

Don’t forget newsletter subscribers get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests. Plus, they also get a first look at our monthly eLitPak. April’s eLitPak is coming to inboxes next Wednesday! So what are you waiting for? Subscribe today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: April 8, 2022”

New Book :: The Discarded Life

The Discarded Life by Adam Kirsch book cover image

The Discarded Life
Poetry by Adam Kirsch
Red Hen Press, May 2022

In this fourth collection of poems, Adam Kirsch shows how the experiences and recognitions of early life continue to shape us into adulthood. Richly evoking a 1980s childhood in Los Angeles, Kirsch uses Gen X landmarks—from Devo to Atari to the Challenger disaster—to tell a story of an emotional and artistic coming of age, exploring universal questions of meaning, mortality, and how we become who we are.

Book Review :: Radio Static by James Hoch

Radio Static by James Hoch book cover image

Guest Post by Carla Sarett

Recently, I have been reading chapbooks, partly as a happy result of submitting my own poetry to small presses. So it was my good fortune to select Radio Static by James Hoch, whose work is new to me. I can’t stop reading it now.   

In this sparse book, Hoch writes of his brother who served a long tour of duty in Afghanistan. (Hoch’s brother served from 2003 to 2021, and is now living in Idaho.) In one gorgeous poem entitled “Afghanistan,” the poet transforms his brother “into a Pashto prayer for what he has done” and Afghanistan into “a cough I clear.” In another poem, “Martins,” Hoch hears the “wind whistling through my brother.” The reader senses the truth of what brothers are, and the horror of what soldiers do and are left with.   

Every war creates its own brand of bitterness, its own unfinished business, and its own poetry. America has quit Afghanistan, but these poems will remind us of the men that war created and forgot. Radio Static will become part of this war’s legacy.

Radio Static by James Hoch. Green Linden Chapbook Series, December 2021.

Reviewer bio: Carla Sarett’s recent poems appear in Pithead Chapel, Quartet Journal, Neologism, and elsewhere. Her novel, A Closet Feminist was published in February 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Carla lives in San Francisco.

Magazine Stand :: Fictive Dream – March-April 2022

Fictive Dream short stories online logo

Open to year-round submissions, Fictive Dream publishes short stories “with a contemporary feel that give an insight into the human condition” in a beautiful, easy-to-access web format. Stories are posted regularly throughout the month based on contributions with e-mail updates sent to notify subscribers of updates (it’s free!). Recent stories include works by Kevin Brennan, David Butler, Gary Fincke, V.J. Hamilton, Gay Degani, Phil Cummins, Steve Cushman, Pamela Painter, Jo-Anne Cappeluti, and Cole Meyer.

New Book :: Future Library

Future Library Contemporary Indian Writing book cover image

Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing
Ed. Anjum Hasan & Sampurna Chattarji
Red Hen Press, July 2022

This anthology brings together one hundred contemporary Indian poets and fiction writers working in English as well as translating from other Indian languages. Located anywhere from Michigan to Mumbai, the sources of their creativity range from the ancient epics to twentieth-century world literature, with themes suggesting a modernist individuality and sense of displacement as well as an ironic, postmodern embracing of multiple disjunctions. The editors present a historical background to the various Englishes apparent in this collection, while also identifying the shared traditions and contexts that hold together their uniquely diverse selection. In aiming at coherence rather than unity, Hasan and Chattarji reveal that the idea of Indianness is as much a means of exploring difference as finding common ground.

Magazine Stand :: Cleaver – Issue 37

Cleaver literary magazine cover image

Cleaver: Philadelphia’s International Literary Magazine has a lot to offer its global readership, including an online Zoom Contributors Reading on April 24 (register to attend). Contributors to the online Spring 2022 issue include stories by Colette Parris, Charlotte Moretti, Eric Rasmussen, AJ Strosahl, Michelle Ross, Ann Stoney, poems by William Erickson, Ronda Broatch, Phillip Schaefer, Robin Neidorf, Quinn Rennerfeldt, flash by Lisa Lebduska, Windy Lynn Harris, Cristina Trapani-Scott, Amy R. Martin, Candace Hartsuyker, Jessica Klimesh, Louella Lester, creative nonfiction by Gregory Emilio, Richard Casimir, Gwen Mullins, visual narrative (comix) by Jennifer Hayden and art by Bette Ridgeway. Cover image by Karen Rile.

Call :: Kings River Review Fall 2022 Issue

Kings River Review logo

Deadline: October 15, 2022
The Kings River Review publishes artwork, creative nonfiction, short fiction, and poetry of current 2-year community college students. Submission Deadlines: October 15 for the fall issue and April 1 for the spring issue. Submission requirements: up to 5 pieces of artwork and photography sent as .JPEG files; creative nonfiction and fiction of up to 3,000 words; and up to 5 poems. Go to kingsriverreview.com for full submission guidelines.

New Book :: Breaking Into Air

Breaking Into Air by Emily Wall book cover image

Breaking Into Air
Poetry by Emily Wall
Boreal Books, June 2022

Poet Emily Wall began collecting birth stories after the birth of her third child, Lucy. She realized that women were always quietly sharing their stories—in living rooms with a mug of tea, or whispered at the preschool playground. She saw the intensity with which women listened to each other’s stories. They were shared, remembered, retold, but not collected, not treated as the art form they are. Wall began asking for and collecting birth stories: women sent her emails, handed her their journals, and recorded their own voices. She collected stories from a lesbian couple, a story from an indigenous father who is fighting for his language, and a story from a grandmother. Some of the stories are about difficult and painful births: a woman who had a miscarriage, a woman unable to get pregnant. And some of the stories are beautiful: a birth in water that happened exactly as the mother dreamed it would. Wall has taken these stories and shaped them into poems, and then into this collection, offering the reader a look into the story that women, for centuries, have been quietly sharing with each other. Published by Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press, established in 2008 to promote literature and fine art from Alaska.

Contest :: 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards

december contest graphic

Deadline: May 1, 2022
december seeks submissions for our 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards in fiction and creative nonfiction. Prizes each genre—$1,500 & publication (winner); $500 & publication (honorable mention). All finalists will be listed in the 2022 Fall/Winter awards issue. The $20 entry fee includes a copy of the awards issue. Submit one story or essay up to 8,000 words deadline May 1. Complete guidelines at our website.

Call :: Oyster River Pages Seeks Submissions for Annual Issue

Oyster River Pages logo

Deadline: May 31, 2022
Oyster River Pages is a literary and artistic collective seeking submissions for our annual issue that stretch creative and social boundaries. In addition to submissions of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and visual arts, we also seek to promote new voices in our Emerging Voices Poetry and Emerging Voices Fiction sections. We believe in the power of art to connect people to their own and others’ humanity, something we see as especially important during these tumultuous times. Because of this, we seek to feature artists whose voices have been historically de-centered or marginalized. Please see www.oysterriverpages.com for submission details.

New Book :: I Wanna Be Loved By You

I Wanna Be Loved By You poetry anthology book cover image

I Wanna Be Loved By You
Poems on Marilyn Monroe
Edited by Susana H. Case and Margo Taft Stever
Milk & Cake Press, January 2022

This anthology compiles poems about Marilyn Monroe from an array of contemporary poets, among them Gwendolyn Brooks, Ted Berrigan, and Frank O’Hara, and includes a poem by Marilyn Monroe herself. The introduction by Lois Banner provides context for the life of the iconic American celebrity, while the poems gathered here demonstrate Monroe’s cultural and emotional impact. Profits from the sale of this anthology will be donated to RAINN.

Magazine Stand :: Society of Classical Poets Journal – March 2022

Society of Classical Poets Journal literary magazine cover image

Posting works on a rolling basis throughout each month, now is your chance to catch up on all the March 2022 Society of Classical Poets Journal contributors, including poetry and essays by Susan Jarvis Bryant, Russel Winick, Phillip Whidden, Shaun C. Duncan, Joseph S. Salemi, Jack DesBois, Cheryl Corey, Lucia Haase, Margaret Coats, Rohini Sunderam, Phil S. Rogers, Norma Pain, C.B. Anderson, Sally Cook, David Watt, Tamara Beryl Latham, Leland James, Satyananda Sarangi, Brian Yapko, James A. Tweedie, Karen Darantière, Peggy Everett, Gregory Ross, Martin Rizley, and Michael Charles Maibach. The Society of Classical Poets Journal also has unique features, like “Henry Olunga Reads Susan Jarvis Bryant’s Poem on Toxic Masculinity,” and regular invitations for readers to contribute works to celebrate holidays or comment on current events, such as inviting poets to share their poetry in response to the still-unfolding Russo-Ukrainian War. All content is free to access online, but signing up to become a member entitles you to a copy of the annual journal as well as receiving a round of feedback on your poetry from Editor Evan Mantyk.

Book Review :: Pocket Universe by Nancy Reddy

Pocket Universe by Nancy Reddy book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

Nancy Reddy’s Pocket Universe confronts the bloody battle of birth, namely a child’s and when a “woman becomes a mother,” but there are other kinds of births, too, within obstetrics, child development, and because the word birth doubles as transition—“into the next life.” The collection opens with the 16th century practice of male doctors moving “between delivery room and morgue,” which put women’s lives at grave risk before epidemiology revealed the necessity of washing hands to prevent communicable disease. From some history of birth, birthing medicine and practices, the poems move to the “failings / of our postpartum bodies” and perinatal anxieties and realities, where the “baby teaches me / I am not what I thought.” The poems of the third section deal with hauntings: “The ghosts of all those women” who lost children in childbirth, including the poet’s grandmother, and the fears particular to a mother of sons. Women’s legitimate “catalog of grievances” continues “inside the long future” of motherhood and marriage in the book’s fourth section, where the poet wonders “if domestic has to be / the opposite of desire.” To answer herself: “inside this mother’s body / / there’s a woman in here still.” Stitched throughout the collection is the enormous responsibility placed on and the shocking disregard for women, often blamed for experiencing pain during childbirth and “perinatal mood and anxiety disorders” in the birth “history written by a man.” This is poetry that admits: “It is so hard / to live inside a body,” and yet “our collective unbearable luck” of “[t]he new world’s not / an unmixed blessing.” Ultimately, Reddy’s is a celebration of this “blessed and lucky life.”

Pocket Universe by Nancy Reddy. Louisiana State University Press, March 2022.

Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems are forthcoming.

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – April 2022

The Lake logo

The newest issue of The Lake journal of poetry and reviews is now online featuring Brent Cantwell, Julian Dobson, Stephen House, Ann Iversen, Rustin Larson, Jennifer A. McGowan, Kirsty Niven, Hannah Stone, Sarah White. Reviews include Marc Totterdell’s Mollusc and Marilyn L. Taylor’s Outside the Frame: New and Selected Poems. There is also a new feature called “One Poem Review,” which the editors describe as “just that: One poem featured from a new book/pamphlet along with a cover JPG and a link to the publisher’s website: as a way to help poets’ works reach a wider audience.” This month’s One Poem Review is “Self-Portrait: Between the Car and the Sea” from Elaine Sexton’s collection Drive. Visit The Lake website for more details.

New Book :: Tower

Tower Stories by Andy Plattner book cover image

Tower: Stories
Fiction by Andy Plattner
Mercer University Press, April 2022

The characters in this collection of stories by Andy Plattner, Assistant Professor of English at Kennesaw State Universit, move through their lives with the sense that something is missing. When attempting to fill the void, they discover that the problem isn’t what’s missing, the problem invariably has to do with a truth they’ve been trying to avoid.

Continue reading “New Book :: Tower”

Magazine Stand :: New England Review – 43.1

New England Review literary magazine cover image

Twenty-nine writers and translators fill out the pages of the Spring 2022 New England Review, including poetry by Sally Wen Mao, Keith S. Wilson, Rosalie Moffett, and Megan Fernandes, fiction by Rob Franklin and Ann Menendez, and essays by Kim McLarin, Sara Michas-Martin, and Robert Anthony Siegel. Visit the New England Review website to learn more about this issue and how you can subscribe.

Contest :: 2022 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize now Open for Submissions

line art red wheelbarrow on white background

Deadline: July 31, 2022
RED WHEELBARROW POETRY PRIZE 2022: Judged by Juan Felipe Herrera! $1,000 for first place and a letterpress broadside printed by Felicia Rice of Moving Parts Press, $500 for second, $250 for third. Top five published in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine. Submit up to 3 original, unpublished poems. $15 entry fee. Deadline: July 31, 2022. For complete guidelines, see redwheelbarrow.submittable.com/submit.

Magazine Stand :: Brilliant Flash Fiction – March 2022

Brilliant Flash Fiction logo

Brilliant Flash Fiction Publishes quarterly at the end of January, March, June, and September, and this quarter’s issue features writers Jessika Grewe Glover, Wim Hylen, Annabel White, Lindsey Harrington, Simon J. Plant, Roberta Beary, Daniel DeRock, Helen Sinoradzki, and Salvatore Difalco. All content is free to read online with subscriptions (also free) providing email updates with individual stories. The archives are also easy to access, and there is a no-fee, cash-prize writing contest that closes on April 15, 2022, judged by Pamela Painter. What are you waiting for? Go check them out!