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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!

CANCELLED :: Tolsun Books’ Translation Chapbook Contest

Deadline: July 31, 2020
The Tolsun Books’ Translation Chapbook Contest, judged by Minna Zallman Proctor, will be held June 1st-July 31st, 2020. Submit a chapbook of about 25 pages of translated poetry, short stories, flash memoir, essays, or hybrids. We favor dynamic voices and non-traditional themes. Winner receives publication and 50 copies of their chapbook. See additional details at tolsunbooks.com/submissions.

**Update 6/29/20: Tolsun Books has decided to cancel this year’s chapbook contest.**

Call :: iō Literary Journal Volume 3

io Literary Journal Volume 3 call for submissions flierDeadline: June 30, 2020
iō Literary Journal was founded in 2018 with the aim of showcasing an array of artistic expression and creative writing pieces from individuals whose voices are underrepresented, and those who may not have traditional writing or artistic backgrounds. iō Literary Journal is back for Volume 3 and will be accepting submissions to its third print volume up until June 30, 2020. Submit at: ioliteraryjournal.submittable.com.

Sync Audio YA for Summer

Once again, Sync Audiobooks is offering a free summer audiobook program for teens (13+) – and perhaps some adults too! SYNC 2020 is utilizing Sora, a student reading app available for free download from OverDrive. Each week Sync shares two YA titles that can be downloaded with no expiration. After the week, the titles are no longer available to download, but previous titles with descriptions remain available on the site.

It’s already Week 5 of the program, but there are seven more weeks remaining. Previous titles include Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson, The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater, Secret Soldiers by Paul B. Janeczko, Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert, Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (stupendously performed!), Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco, Sisters Matsumoto by Philip Kan Gotanda, and Disappeared by Francisco X. Stork.

All you have to do to access the titles is register your email address. I’ve done so for the past two years and never receive any related junk mail or other solicitations, so this is an great program for teens and adults alike!

Call :: Molecule – a tiny lit mag Fall 2020 Issue

Deadline: July 15, 2020
Call for submissions for the Fall 2020 issue of Molecule – a tiny lit mag. Poetry, prose, nonfiction, plays, reviews, and interviews in 50 words or less (including titles and interview questions). Visual art work of tiny things like tea bags and toothpicks, or tiny paintings also wanted: no skyscrapers please! Strict word count. Don’t try and trick us we have small minds. Send submissions preferably in the body of the email or jpeg attachment for photos to moleculetinylitmag@gmail.com, along with a 3rd person bio no more than 24 words (including name). moleculetinylitmag.art.blog

Contest :: The Conium Review 2020 Innovative Short Fiction Contest

The Conium Review 2020 Innovative Fiction Contest FlierDeadline: July 1, 2020
The Conium Review 2020 Innovative Short Fiction Contest is open for submissions. Winner receives $500, publication in the next print edition, five copies of the issue, and a copy of the judge’s latest book. This year’s judge is Emily Wortman-Wunder, author of Not a Thing to Comfort You (University of Iowa Press). July 1st deadline. $15 entry fee. Guidelines here: coniumreview.com/contests.

Reading “Insomnia in Moonlight” by Alice Friman

Gettysburg Review - Autumn 2019Guest Post by Emily Lowe

Alice Friman’s “Insomnia in Moonlight” in The Gettysburg Review Fall 2019 is a moving poem that grapples with a popular theme within this issue: death. Friman handles the topic delicately, with humor, and with heft. The poem is broken into four irregular stanzas beginning with the dead waking in the night, making noise. This stanza read with immediate intrigue through the life Friman breathed into death about a speaker who cannot sleep because the dead are alive in their thoughts. It suggests playfulness, too, written with a lighter tone than often associated with death and mourning.

Friman then equates the dead to the sun, something bright and fixed, and the speaker to the changeable moon, “she wears my child face—round, / sunburnt, and pensive.” The final lines in the poem are the most striking, offering up the speaker’s recount of a total eclipse where the moon tried to “blot out the sun.” It felt like a reflection of their desire to hold death in their hands and make sense of it, but the speaker admits that the moon fails in its attempt to resist permanence, to resist, as Friman puts so eloquently in her final two lines: “geometric progression, the unerasable / dead, and everything else I don’t understand.”

Reviewer bio: Emily Lowe is an MFA candidate in Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she is also a fiction editor for Ecotone literary magazine.

Find New Favorites in The Malahat Review

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

The cover of the latest issue of The Malahat Review is a calming scene: a full moon framed by powerlines over a pastel sky. It invites readers to pick it up and open it to discover what’s inside. I had found two new favorites in the pages: “Nice Girl” by Hollie Adams and “A High Frequency Words List” by Matthew Gwathmey.

In “Nice Girl,” Adams’s speaker likens herself to a mall who would “never automatically / open the doors even though / there’d be a sign saying / Automatic Doors.” She admits she’d keep them locked because she’s “evil / even though in real life / I’m always doing nice things.” This poem is a fun exploration of one’s inner self and the intentions behind actions. There’s a sense of humor in this piece even as it leads to introspection, an enjoyable aspect.

Gwathmey’s poem is in four sections, each one a list of words picked from the Fry and the Dolch sight word lists, used in children’s vocabulary development. This piece is just four paragraphs listing off words, a cool form of recycling.

There is plenty more poetry and prose to find inside this issue of The Malahat Review. Grab a copy to find your own favorites.

Life in Lockdown: Re-Reading Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall

Guest Post by M.G Noles

The Mark on the Wall is a brief tale in which Virginia Woolf describes a winter evening at home in the English countryside during WWI. She, like her fellow Britons, are under lockdown because of the war. Frankly, she has nothing but time on her hands, and she is so lonely that all she has to do with her time is gaze at a mark upon a wall.

The curious mark is the platform which allows her to ponder, not only the mark, but her life, her surroundings, and that pesky mark she cannot be bothered to walk across the room to identify. Could it be a nail? Perhaps a bit of gravy? She doesn’t know. So, she allows her mind to fly off in a thousand different meditations on life and death, on what it all means, on her place in the scheme of it all.

Woolf wrote this story in 1917 while the world was falling apart around her. She endured nightly air-raids, rockets blaring, shots fired across the channel. And, so, she used her writing as a way to escape it all.

The contemplation of a mark upon a wall seemed absurd to me when I read it years ago. But, now, having been a shut-in for these many weeks due to Covid-19, I find myself (like Woolf did) gazing at simple things around the house—toothpaste tubes, detergent boxes, and soup cans—and then my mind goes flying away. Life feels so foreign when shut indoors.

Woolf writes that life to her at that time felt like “being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour—landing at the other end without a single hair pin in one’s hair!”

That is exactly how I feel right now, too, that life is all of a sudden a bizarre affair in which we are utterly out of control, “with one’s hair flying back like the tail of a race horse.” And, heaven knows where on earth we will land.

The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf. 1917.

Reviewer bio: M.G Noles is a freelance writer and history buff.

[CLOSED] Contest :: 2020 Sublingua Prize for Poetry

Deadline: July 1 2020
Send us your BEST FIVE pieces! Get your work in front of our judge, award-winning KHADIJAH QUEEN, author of six books, most recently, ANODYNE (Tin House, August 2020)!! Prize is open to writers who haven’t yet published a book-length collection or a chapbook. Submission fee: $15 for five pieces. Even if you’re not a winner or a finalist, you may still be published in our print issue and 2) you may be read by our judge. Past contributors include Rae Armantrout, Kiki Petrosino, Philip Metres, Kathy Fish, Andrea Rexilius, Eric Baus, J Michael Martinez and more.

Nonlinear Exploration of Life

Guest Post by Karen J. Weyant

Sue William Silverman’s life is hanging by a thread.

Or, at least that may be the initial reaction a reader may get from Silverman’s latest collection, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences. The title itself suggests that Silverman’s book is a catalog of death-defying experiences and yes, there are somber essays that explore her survival as a sexual assault victim and her hypochondriac ventures into the medical world. But other essays are more lighthearted, such as the one piece where, as a middle-aged narrator, she tells about her adventures at an Adam Lambert conference.

In essence, Silverman’s book is a nonlinear exploration of her life arranged into three sections adapted from the Three Fates of Greek Mythology: Clotho (the spinner) Lachesis (the measurer), and Atropos (the cutter). Sometimes, her essays tell stories in the traditional narrative form, while others use more experimental styles. However, read together, this collection is more than just about surviving death: it’s really about having hope and resilience in life.

How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences by Sue William Silverman. University of Nebraska Press, March 2020.

Reviewer bio: Karen J. Weyant‘s essays have been published in BioStories, Briar Cliff Review, Carbon Culture Review, Crab Creek Review, Coal Hill Review, Lake Effect and Waccamaw. She is an Associate Professor of English at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York.

Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Call :: Mental Snapback seeks Recovery Stories

Don’t forget to dive into the latest episodes of podcast series Mental Snapback for an idea of what they like. Then consider submitting your own mental health recovery stories to be featured in upcoming episodes. The podcast is for everyone and anyone who has experienced mental illness, whether it be that you have experienced acute or chronic illnesses yourself or someone you love has experienced them. They know the struggle, and don’t want to invalidate that. However, they want to hear about the other side—the recovery of your struggles—to build a foundation of hope for whoever may need it. Currently, they only accept creative nonfiction in the form of essays. Acceptance of manuscripts occurs on a rolling basis, and they will be read aloud on weekly podcast episodes. mentalsnapback.com/submission-guidelines/

Call :: COVID LIT Seeks Work for Monthly Issues

COVID LIT logoCOVID LIT is a monthly online lit mag that gives the middle finger to COVID-19 by publishing, promoting, and spreading art, poetry, and prose using the disease’s name. What sets us apart from other magazines? Simple: instead of paying us a submission fee, writers must donate at least $3 to a nonprofit of their choice. Since we launched in late April 2020, our writers have donated over $3000 directly to regional, national, and international nonprofits, so send your best work and use your creative superpowers for good! Visit www.covidlit.org today!

Call :: Words & Whispers Issue 1

Submissions accepted year-round.
Words & Whispers is an online literary journal seeking to publish poetry and short prose by writers of all ages on a year-round rolling basis. Send us the wild and divine, the eccentric and experimental. For more information please visit www.wordsandwhispers.org.

Goldmine of Wisdom

Guest Post by Bright Heaven’s

Have you ever wondered to yourself (like I did): how do the world’s great entrepreneurs and innovators come up with such unique and brilliant ideas for their businesses? Then this book, The Idea Hunter, a very recent read of mine, is what I will recommend for you.

Ideas rule the world. In fact, the global space runs on an idea cum knowledge economy. It is on this premise that the book was written and it serves to bust the myth that brilliant, earth-shaping, and career-boosting ideas come from brilliant minds. Rather, it seeks to reveal that breakaway ideas come to those who are in the habit of looking for them all the time. These people are referred to as Idea Hunters.

In this book, I learned about how and what it takes for people to create a superb idea that leads to the creation of a successful innovation through the description of the characteristics and behaviors of several successful idea hunters. The Idea Hunter informs and unearths the habits shared by many great innovators and inventors of the past century. From very popular innovators such as Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs etc., to less popular names such as Jack Hughes, Paul Romer, Jim Koch, Greg brown Jay Hooley, Michael D White etc., readers get a raw perception into how they developed their ideas and the steps they took to bring them into reality. What I find most interesting is how several top global brand/companies such as Apple, Walt Disney, Gore-tex, Elixir Strings, and Boston Beer, among others, came into being through a simple albeit conscious act—the serious business of Idea Hunting.

This is quite an average volume consisting of six chapters, and I can tell you that each of the chapters is a goldmine deposited with wisdom on how to generate and actualize ideas.

The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen by Andy Boynton, Bill Fischer, William Bole. Wiley, April 2011.

Reviewer bio: Bright Heaven’s is an educator, a writer, poet, author, public speaker, information scientist, and a budding musician from Nigeria. He has publications in the Korea-Nigeria Anthology and several Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) literary journals. Find him at: https://bright-heavens.site.live.

Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Call :: the Vitni Review Seeks Creative Writing for Fall 2020 Issue

Deadline: Rolling
the Vitni Review seeks creative writing submissions on an ongoing basis for its Fall 2020 issue. Our intention is to publish writing that pushes against convention, which challenges, subverts, or skillfully manipulates tradition, and which serves to advance the understanding of human culture and experience via interesting metaphors, exciting diction, and engaging content. We are especially dedicated to publishing work by writers from historically under- or misrepresented demographics. See our guidelines at www.vitnireview.org/submit.

The Malahat Review – Spring 2020

Our spring issue showcases the 2020 Open Season Award winners: Joshua Whitehead (cnf), Patrick Grace (poetry), and Ajith Thangavelautham (fiction). Also featured: Manahil Bandukwala, Ayaz Pirani, Christine Wu, Rob Taylor, Edward Carson, Matthew Gwathmey, Tania De Rozario, Hollie Adams, Emi Kodama, Bradley Peters, Kevin Shaw, Emma Wunsch, Glen Downie, and more.

The Gettysburg Review – 33.4

The Autumn issue of The Gettysburg Review is out. The issue features paintings by Jared Small, fiction by Jennifer Anne Moses, Jared Hanson, Darrell Kinsey, and Sean Bernard; essays by Andrew Cohen, K. Robert Schaeffer, and Christopher Wall; poetry by Jill McDonough, Max Seifert, K. A. Hays, Albert Goldbarth, Mary B. Moore, R. T. Smith, Jill Bialosky, Katharine Whitcomb, Corey Marks, Kimberly Johnson, Margaret Ray, Danusha Laméris, Linda Pastan, Christopher Bakken, Christopher Howell, and Margaret Gibson.

Call :: Palooka Seeks Chapbooks, Prose, Poetry, Art & Photography

Palooka is an international literary magazine. For a decade we’ve featured up-and-coming, established, and brand-new writers, artists, and photographers from all around the world. We’re open to diverse forms and styles and are always seeking unique chapbooks, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, artwork, photography, graphic narratives, and comic strips. Free digital copies of back issues now available for a short time. Give us your best shot! Submissions open year-round. palookamag.com

Carve Magazine – Spring 2020

This issue includes short stories by and interviews with Ashley Hand, Chris Vanjonack, Reece McCormack, and David J. Wingrave; poetry by Kimberly Thornton, Andrew Szilvasy, Bruce Lowry, Ryan Meyer, and Jose Hernandez Diaz; and nofiction by Gregg Williard and Greg Oldfield. Read more at the Carve website.

The Baltimore Review – Spring 2020

The Spring issue of The Baltimore Review features poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction by: John Blair, Shevaun Brannigan, Naomi Cohn, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Katherine Gekker, Matthew Henry, R. Dean Johnson, Yume Kitasei, Andrew Kozma, Avra Margariti, Rita Mookerjee, Glen Pourciau, Ellen Skirvin, David Urbina, and M. Drew Williams.

The Adroit Journal – May 2020

The May 2020 issue is here with poetry by Jenny George, Arthur Sze, Jessica Abughattas, Melissa Crowe, Jamaica Baldwin, C.X. Hua, Kara van de Graaf, Hala Alyan, Mark Wunderlich, Raymond Antrobus, Stephanie Chang, and more; prose by Scott Broker, Alyssa Proujansky, Maura Pellettieri, and Mina Hamedi, with a prose feature by Dima Alzayat. See what else the issue has in store for you at The Adroit Journal website.

Contest :: $5,000 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

Every year, the University of Arkansas Press accepts submissions for the Miller Williams Poetry Series and from the books selected awards the $5,000 Miller Williams Poetry Prize in the following summer. For almost a quarter century the press has made this series the cornerstone of its work as a publisher of some of the country’s best poetry. The series is edited by Patricia Smith. The deadline for the 2022 Prize is September 30, 2020. Jayson Iwen’s Roze & Blud, published in March 2020, was the winner of the 2020 Miller Williams Poetry Prize. For more information visit uapress.com.

Call :: Blue Mountain Review Wants the Best Stories in All Genres

The Blue Mountain Review flierNow in it’s 5 year, The Blue Mountain Review was launched from Athens, Georgia in 2015 with the mantra, “We’re all south of somewhere.” As a journal of culture the BMR strives to represent life through its stories. Stories are vital to our survival. Songs save the soul. Our goal is to preserve and promote lives told well through prose, poetry, music, and the visual arts. Our editors read year-round with an eye out for work with homespun and international appeal. We’ve published work with Jericho Brown, Kelli Russell Agodon, Robert Pinsky, Rising Appalachia, Nahko, Michel Stone, Genesis Greykid, Cassandra King, Melissa Studdard, and A.E. Stallings. www.southerncollectiveexperience.com/submission-guidelines/

Call :: Club Plum Wants Powerful yet Subtle Pieces

Deadline: Rolling
Submissions open for flash fiction of no more than 800 words and prose poems. Send powerful yet subtle pieces. Send strong voices. Send dreamy words that don’t gush. Skate on the edge of realities. Club Plum also seeks art: Please send one image only of pen-and-ink line art, watercolor, bold colors, experimental work, collage, impressionistic or abstract pieces. Tell the editor about your piece. The editor will pass on photography. See clubplumliteraryjournal.com for details.

James Braun Brings Readers Back to Winter

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

Everything is green and warm outside my window right now, but James Braun takes readers back to winter in his story “The Salt Man” from the Spring 2020 issue of Zone 3.

The story centers on two young sisters mid-winter. They are sent outside to wait for the salt man to come salt their roads before they’re allowed to play outside their yard. This is a dark piece. Poverty hangs heavy over the story. What once was green and beautiful has been covered by rocks. They have no heat in the house. Their neighbor loses fingers to frostbite. A woman cries on a couch while they go door to door asking if they can shovel driveways for cash to pay for a doctor bill. And the person they’re told will bring them a level of safety—the salt man—ends up being a source of danger in himself.

I enjoyed Braun’s writing style. There’s a level of flippancy with all the characters who view their lifestyle as ordinary. The story is short but holds a lot inside it. We’re able to discern as much meaning in what isn’t said as in what is clearly stated. And even though it is warm enough that I have my window open, a warm breeze blowing into my living room as I write this, Braun’s writing still makes a reader feel that inescapable cold of winter.

Resources for Young Writers

Among the many wonderful resources NewPages offers to readers and writers is our Young Writers Guide to Publications, which features publications by and for young readers, and our Young Writers Guide to Contests, which includes carefully vetted legitimate contests. These are open-access ad-free guides that I personally curate out of my commitment to supporting young readers and writers as well as parents and teachers.

Despite the pandemic which surrounds us, great efforts are still going on to create opportunities and provide motivation and encouragement for young writers. I recently heard from Sophia Hanson, who is one of three founders of the National Youth Foundation. This Pennsylvania-based non-profit seeks to improve literacy and educate youth on topics related to social justice. Each year, they run two book competitions: Student Book Scholars – which involves players from the NFL, NBA, and MLB; and Amazing Women’s Edition – a national writing contest focused on gender equality. Past competition winners have been honored at the Smithsonian Museum as well as having their images included in a statue honoring the late Marian Spencer, who was the subject of the winning book.

I am so heartened to know that this kind of outreach to young writers persists through these difficult times. When I asked Sophia how this has impacted their work, she responded, “The global pandemic has more parents at home than ever. We have also seen a major increase in emails from parents about our contests and programs. We even had NBA and NFL players contact us to host a Bounce Back art contest to help kids process the pandemic. On the flip side of that, we had two writing workshop series planned in Philadelphia with two amazing women, and those are on hold.”

Still, like so many efforts, the National Youth Foundation will find ways to continue to engage young writers. Now more than ever, online resources like ours are here to help. If you have young people in your life or know of others who do, please tell them about NewPages Guides for young readers and writers!

David Chorlton Interviewed in The Bitter Oleander

The Spring 2020 Issue of The Bitter Oleander includes a special feature. Editor Paul B. Roth interviews poet David Chorlton. Readers can also find a selection from Chorlton’s Speech Scroll. Below, check out an excerpt from the interview and visit The Bitter Oleander website to get a taste of Speech Scroll.

PBR: In your Speech Scroll, a sampling of which follows this interview, you’ve put the urban and the desert world together so expertly over some 158 poems. Did this particular project start off with that in mind or was it just your current ongoing consciousness of where you were in that environment and who you are that brought it forth?

DC: . . . While there are the times I sit down to commit words to paper, the actual writing of poetry is never turned off. Without placing a title or thinking of a poem’s shape, I had an ongoing path to follow and that helped me shift a little in the way I see images come together. Thinking about the political happenings of our tumultuous time might become too consuming, and for some people it is. Others seem to remain oblivious to anything that goes on in that realm. Writing poetry, being the most natural form of communication for me, has been a good place in which to scatter comments and observations that, I hope, provoke more thought than argument. Life encompasses a wide range of pleasures and frustrations, comfort for the fortunate and responsibility toward those who are not, and so with the help of various bird and animal species, plus a view of the sunrise from our front door when I’m up early to see it I take, as I mentioned earlier, what is given, and transform it the best way I can.

Emi Nietfeld Investigates Her Past

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

Opening the Spring 2020 issue of Boulevard is the winner of the journal’s 2019 Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers: “My Mom Claims I Had a Drink with My Rapist. I Investigate.” by Emi Nietfeld.

In this piece, Nietfeld looks back to June 28, 2010 when she was raped while in Budapest and to the conversations she had with her mother immediately after and eight years later about the incident. This investigation focuses on the drink that Nietfeld did or didn’t have and the influence the drink had on her mother’s reaction to the rape.

Nietfeld breaks the piece up into sections, investigating in-person conversations, emails that were sent in 2010, and her old computer documents. After she presents the “evidence,” she breaks it down and discusses it. I found this approach to be interesting and impactful as she turns a critical eye on past conversations, her memory, and her relationship with her mother.

Not only is this piece a strong start to the issue, but it demonstrates why Nietfeld deserves to have won the Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers.

Feel the Pulse of LitMag

Guest Post by Jamie Tews

LitMag is a literary magazine published annually from New York City. The magazine’s pulse is found on page sixty-three with a quote from Aryeh Lev Stollman’s fiction piece “Dreams Emerging,” which states “true art is the condensation of ineffable yearning.” An ineffable yearning is a longing so strong it cannot be described; however, this issue’s work attempts description, and through writing, pieces of the unsaid become real. With fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and tributary letters, LitMag’s third issue holds work that embodies the condensation of ineffable yearning.

Meghan E. O’Toole’s fiction story “Abditory” carries the loudest pulse. It is a hazy and dreamlike exploration of how longing can manifest in dreams and become necessary for engaging with reality. O’Toole uses the image of milk to connect the main character’s past and present with their dream-images, and it is in the way the milk moves, the way it rises in the bedroom or pools on the road, that the story supplements the issue’s character of yearning. O’Toole’s story successfully employs elements of magical realism, which create a vivid sense of place that is consistent in every scene. I instantly believed in the fictional world she created, and this lack of hesitancy to trust and settle into the story’s place drew me back for a second and third read.

The magazine’s cohesion comes from every piece having its own sense of magnetism, and I read the magazine in one sitting. Each piece easily pulled me into the next, and it is for this ease and sense of connectivity that recommend LitMag.

Reviewer bio: Jamie is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington and holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Indiana Wesleyan University. She has contributed work to Appalachian Voice, Appalachia Service Project, and has work forthcoming in the Chestnut Review.

August Poetry Postcard Festival

Considering all the cancelled or postponed or modified conferences and workshops, it’s comforting to know the August Poetry Postcard Festival is up and running this year just as it has been for the past twelve years!

The concept is simple: You sign up and your name is added to a group along with 31 others. Once the group is “full,” you each get the list with names and addresses of participants in your group. The week before August, you start writing and sending you postcards (so that the first one arrives around the first of August). You write one postcard per day and send it to the person listed after your name in the group. The next day, you write another poem and send it to the next person – and so on until you go through the list. One for each day.

The idea is spontaneous writing without editing, censoring, or revision. You can use the postcard as your prompt or not. Some people choose a theme to write on for the month. The postcards vary from store bought to homemade, contemporary to vintage. It’s really wide open to your creativity, imagination, and passion. Then, throughout the month of August, you will receive poems in the mail from the others in your group.

This year – the one change in the event has been year-round registration – so you can register now. Some participants have already started sending cards instead of waiting until August – in response to the pandemic – since we could all use a bit more poetry and a bit more connection in our daily lives. A few ambitious writers have already completed their 31 cards and have signed up for another group! The organizers welcome repeat participation.

This is a safe and fun way to connect, motivate your writing, and enjoy the wonderful gifts that others will send your way. Sign up today!

 

Call :: Red Planet Magazine Wants Speculative Work

Deadline: Rolling
Red Planet Magazine is an independent literary magazine emphasizing a theme of speculative fiction, and is open for submissions year-round on a rolling basis. Contributors receive a digital copy of the issue in which their work has been featured. Please visit www.redplanetmagazine.com for additional information.

Call :: borrowed solace seeks mystical work

Deadline: July 31, 2020
borrowed solace is looking for “Mystical” works for the fall themed 2020 literary journal. We accept nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art. Submissions close July 31, 2020; and you can review our guidelines, what the editors are looking for, and submit here at www.borrowedsolace.com. We want to read what mystifies you!

Sponsor Spotlight: Mom Egg Review

Mom Egg Review - Spring 2020

Mom Egg Review is an annual print journal focused on motherhood. Their issues featured varied voices at all career phases.

This year’s issue is on the theme of “Home,” an apt focus for all of us currently staying at home and practicing social distancing. It’s a nice reminder that we’re not alone. Like many other journals at the moment, the editors have put together a virtual reading for readers. “Voices from HOME” links to contributors inviting everyone into their homes as they explore the theme.

Call :: The Petigru Review Seeks Submissions for Annual Issue

Online literary magazine The Petigru Review is looking for surprising stories, poems, essays, and first novel chapters for their annual journal. They are especially interested in supporting diverse and emerging voices. Submissions close 7/31/20 or when they hit 500 submissions. $3-4 fee. www.thepetigrureview.com

Contest :: Laux/Millar RR Prize Closes June 1

This is just a reminder that literary magazine Raleigh Review is open to submissions for its 2020 Laux/Millar RR Prize until 5 AM EST on June 1.

Initial judges for the prize are the poetry team of the literary magazine, stacked with award winners. Joseph Millar and Dorianne Laux will then judge the finalists. All entrants will receive a copy of the prize issue (a $20 value) to be released in Fall 2020.

Entry fee for the contest is $15 to submit up to 5 poems. First prize is $500 and publication. Finalists will receive $15 and publication. All poems submitted will be considered for normal publication along with Raleigh Review‘s standard pay rate.

Submissions are accepted via Submittable only.

NewPages Book Stand – May 2020

We have a new Book Stand at NewPages. This month, find new and forthcoming book titles, including five featured books at our website.

Audubon’s Sparrow: A Biography-in-Poems by Juditha Dowd  is an indelible portrait of an American Woman in need of rediscovery. The biography-in-poems focuses on Lucy Blackwell and John James Audubon.

Gerry LaFemina’s Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping pauses time, letting us examine the world with love and intelligence.

Back to the Wine Jug: A Comic Novel in Verse by Joe Taylor is a cross-genre title following Hades as he teleports to Birmingham, Alabama.

Frank Paino’s Obscura sheds light on the most obscure corners of history and human nature, a hagiography of unorthodox saints.

You’ve Got Something Coming by Jonathan Starke is the winner of the Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction and follows a down-and-outer and his young daughter across the country.

You can learn more about each of these New & Noteworthy books at our website. Our featured titles can also be found at our our affiliate Bookshop.org. You can find out how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section here: https://npofficespace.com/classified-advertising/new-title-issue-ad-reservation/.

Call :: About Place Journal Works of Resistance, Resilience

Deadline: August 1, 2020
Each issue of About Place Journal, the arts publication of the Black Earth Institute, focuses on a specific theme. From 6/1 to 8/1 we’ll be accepting submissions for our Fall 2020 issue Works of Resistance, Resilience. Our mission: to have art address the causes of spirit, earth, and society; to protect the earth; and to build a more just and interconnected world. We publish prose, poetry, visual art, photography, video, and music which fit the current theme. More about this issue’s theme and our submission guidelines: aboutplacejournal.org/submissions/.

Call :: Xi Draconis Books Seeks Socially Engaged Manuscripts

Don’t forget that Xi Draconis Books is open to socially engaged, book-length works for publication in 2020 and 2021. They accept novels, short story and poetry collections, memoirs, essay collections, and cross-genre works. Their mission is to publish works examining social justice issues of all kinds. Head to xidraconis.org/submission-guidelines/ to submit. Check out a recent title from their catalog—it’s free. There is no fee to submit. Deadline: July 31.

Call :: This Is What America Looks Like Anthology Closes to Submissions on June 1

If you are a poet or writer living in or with ties to Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, don’t forget that you have until June 1 to submit fiction or poetry to Washington Writers’ Publishing House for their first anthology in 25 years!

They are a 47-year-old nonprofit, cooperative, all-volunteer press and are looking for new and established writers, a cross-section of diverse voices, to write on America today. Be provocative, be personal or political (or both). They want writing that helps us see and reflect on this moment we are living in. More information at www.washingtonwriters.org. Submit at wwph.submittable.com/submit. There is a $5 fee.

Sponsor Spotlight: RHINO

RHINO publishes some of the best and most innovative poetry, short shorts, and translations in their annual issues. For their 2020 issue, the editors have organized an ongoing virtual reading event for the month of May. You still have some time to join in the fun, and you can learn more about these virtual readings here.

To learn more about the annual journal, visit their sponsored listing at NewPages.

Modern Espionage in Ancient Rome

Guest Post by Bill Cushing

Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey is probably best known for his books dealing with China, where his father served as a missionary, but in The Conspiracy, he takes readers back to the first century AD and Nero’s imperial and mainly insanity-tinged reign.

Like the works of Robert Graves or Leon Uris, Hersey uses a historical backdrop to present a political thriller of the first order. Employing two main characters—Tigellinus, co-consul of the Praetorian guard, and Paenus, tribune of the Roman secret police, along with a series of memos, assorted notes, intercepted letters, and interrogation transcripts—the two members of Nero’s intelligence community try chasing leads concerning a potential assassination attempt against their emperor.

The primary suspects involved in this plan?

The philosopher Seneca and a cadre of poets, artists that Nero had earlier supported and entertained, are surveilled, bringing up images from the Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others.

However, as the layers of the plot open, it begins to reveal Nero’s descent into madness.

Soon, the reader begins to wonder if this is an actual investigation or a means to create a paper trail pointing to others in order to establish scapegoats while the members of Nero’s own security people become the real perpetrators.

One interesting aspect of this book is that it was released in 1972, when news and revelations of the Watergate incident dominated worldwide media and occupied American minds. Hersey’s story produced numerous parallels between the subterfuge and hidden messages of the novel with the events of those days. If readers want to make those connections or draw any parallels with current events is their choice, of course, but the fact that it’s possible only verifies what a relevant story Hersey concocted in any age when he conceived and delivered The Conspiracy.

The Conspiracy by John Hersey. 1972.

Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.

Zone 3 – Spring 2020

The issue of Zone 3 includes poetry by Darius Atefat-Peckham, Colin Bailes, Brian Bender, Daniel Biegelson, Christopher Citro, Lynn Domina, Alexandria Hall, Lauren Hilger, Angie Macri, Martha McCollough, A. Molotkov, Kell Nelson, Amy Seifried, Pui Ying Wong, and more; fiction by James Braun, Janice Deal, Tammy Delatorre, Maura Stanton, and Terry Thomas; nonfiction by Rebecca McClanahan, Katherine Schaefer, and William Thompson, and art by Khari Turner.

The Chattahoochee Review – Spring 2020

In this issue, poetry by Ruth Bardon, Mirande Bissell, Darren Demaree, Eli Eliahu, Stuart Gunter, Marlon Hacla, Ted Kooser, Len Krisak, Komal Mathew, and more; stories by Margherita Arco, Erin Flanagan, and more; essays by George Choundas, and others; and art by Deedee Cheriel. This issue also features the 2020 Lamar York Prize Winners: Lisa Nikolidakis in Fiction & Rachel Toliver in Nonfiction.

The Bitter Oleander – Spring 2020

The Spring 2020 issue of The Bitter Oleander features the contemporary Arizona poet David Chorlton, interviewed by our editor and including a generous selection of poems from his forthcoming book, Speech Scrolls. The issue also presents translations from the fiction of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (Portugal); and poetry in translation by Paula Abramo (Mexico), Alberto Blanco (Mexico), Maritza Cino (Ecuador), Andre du Bouchet (France), and Elaine Vilar Madruga (Cuba).

Call :: ode to Queer

Deadline: September 1, 2020
ode to Queer is an unabashedly queer literary and artistic journal looking for art from LGBTQIA+ artists that is experimental, fringe, and vulnerable. Our journal exists to create a queer cannon that centers and celebrates marginalized and rural voices without hiding behind diluted language or imagery to appease cis-hetero-centered viewership. We don’t wish to bottleneck the creativity of our artists, which is why we welcome all forms of visual and written art that are conscious of our guidelines. Visit odetoqueer.com/submissions for more details and to see what we’re about!

AGNI – No 91

With AGNI #91 we welcome a roster of new editors. Collectively chosen work explores impending crises as well as acts of mitigating goodness; elegies marking losses sit side by side with expressions flashing pure surprise. Cover and portfolio artist Christopher Cozier captures the sly globalized vectors of use and misuse, tracing a long history forward to now. Poems by Sandra McPherson, Steven Sanchez, Emily Mohn-Slate, Colin Channer, and others offer the sensory grab of the immediate, as do stories by Shauna Mackay, David Crouse, and Aurko Maitra and essays by Debra Nystrom, Jiaming Tang, and Ann Hood.

Call :: Writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional, and Physical Abuse

Deadline: October 15, 2020
We are seeking work by survivors of domestic abuse. Creative nonfiction, memoir, flash nonfiction. Please note that at this time we are not accepting poetry. Deadline: October 15, 2020. The book will be published by McFarland & Company; contributors will receive a complimentary copy. Please send your submission in Word, with a brief cover letter and 50 word bio to Judith Skillman, jskillman54@gmail.com and Linera Lucas, lineralucas@alumni.reed.edu. This text is dedicated to all those who dared to break the silence.

Contest :: Poet Hunt 25 from The MacGuffin

The MacGuffin 2020 Poet Hunt flierDeadline: June 15, 2020
The MacGuffin’s 25th Poet Hunt Contest runs April 1 through June 15! One first place winner will receive $500 and publication; up to two Honorable Mentions also selected. We’re happy to have Matthew Olzmann as guest judge! Send up to five poems per $15 entry fee. On a cover page, list your contact info and poem titles. On the following page(s), include your poems, beginning each poem on a new page devoid of personally identifiable information to preserve the blind review process. Enter via Submittable (themacguffin.submittable.com/submit), or to enter by email or post, see full rules at our website (schoolcraft.edu/macguffin/contest-rules).

AGNI Offers Something Special

AGNI is currently offering something really special for readers: the Virtual Launch of AGNI 91.

Here, the editors present videos from their contributors from all over the world and invite readers (or viewers!) to join the audience. All the pieces from the new Spring 2020 issue are available online, most of which have an accompanying video of the writer reading their work.

This is great not only for people who might not be able to spare extra cash to get their own copy (though if you can, please do consider it), but it’s also great for those of us who are having a hard time sitting down and concentrating on reading while we’re social distancing, and those who currently miss attending readings in person.

You can also learn more about the editors who have put this fantastic project together at the AGNI website.

I for one can’t wait to hit “play” and start hearing quality reading in my own home.