The Spring 2020 issue of Black Warrior Review is out. In this issue: Aliza Ali Khan, Sébastien Bernard, Agata Izabela Brewer, Naomi Day, Meg E. Griffitts, Katherine Indermaur, Sara Kachelman, Jasmine Khaliq, Jessica Lanay, M.L. Martin, Cherise Morris, Mónica Ramón Ríos (translated by Robin Myers), Monica Rico, Angie Sijun Lou, Molli Spalter, Qianqian Ye, and more. Chapbook by Seo-Young Chu. Cover art by Dominic Chambers.
Find the newest issue of The Adroit Journal is out. Readers can check out poetry by Bryan Byrdlong, Steven Duong, Garous Abdolmalekian, Emily Lee Luan, John Freeman, Erin Adair-Hodges, Peter Streckfus, Ae Hee Lee, Matthew Gellman, Sara Elkamel, Seth Simons, Imani Davis, Kim Addonizio, Sahar Romani, Zach Linge, Matthew Rohrer, Joanna Klink, and more; prose by Cathy Ulrich, K-Ming Chang, Connor Oswald, and others; plus conversations with Natalie Diaz, Matthew Rohrer, Brian Teare, Deb Olin Unferth, and Matthew Zapruder.
Deadline: April 30, 2020
It may be April, but Christmas is already in the air at Chicken Soup for the Soul. Share your winter holiday memories and traditions with our readers, from the heartwarming to the hilarious. Everything from Thanksgiving, to Hanukkah, to Christmas, to New Year’s. Be sure the stories are “Santa safe” so we don’t spoil the magic for precocious readers! If we publish your piece, you will be paid $200 plus 10 free copies of the book. Writing guidelines and more info at www.chickensoup.com/story-submissions/possible-book-topics.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Each issue of THEMA invites writers to explore a given theme. The Spring 2020 issue’s theme is “Six Before Eighty,” which Editor Virginia Howard explains in her Editor’s Note, gave writers a run for their money. It “tended to puzzle more authors than usual.”
Despite the challenge, sixteen on-theme pieces made it into the issue. H.B. Salzer in “Her Number Six” writes of a woman’s bucket list—six things to do before she turns eighty. James “Jack” Penha in “Eulogy for My Elder Brother,” writes fondly of his brother who passed away at age seventy-four—six years before turning eighty. In “Written in Gold,” Larry Lefkowitz’s characters try their own hand at translating the theme finding it in a Mayan inscription in a temple. But my two favorite pieces in the issue each interpret the theme as different roads.
In “Mantra” by Lisa Timpf, the numbers are a reminder for a man’s fading memory. Regional Road 6 comes before Sideroad 80 and then he’s home. Readers can feel the anxiety in the piece as he repeats his mantra, trying to get home while admitting he “hasn’t told his wife / how much has slipped away.” But his mantra always gets him back home.
Cherie Bowers’s “Off-Ramp” is a short poem conjuring up Exit 6 as it merges onto 1-80. Here, a memorial with “fading words” reads, “We love you, Jason.” “To see it clearly,” the speaker says, “you must slow down,” a reminder for readers it’s necessary to slow down to truly see everything around us and to give thought to these fading signs we see beside the road.
I’m sure it was a lot of run writing for this issue of THEMA, and it was a lot of run reading what everyone was able to come up with.
Guest Post by Robert Bensen
We can go to Margot Farrington’s The Blue Canoe of Longing (as Seamus Heaney wrote of poetry at large) “to be forwarded within ourselves,” to conceive “a new scope for our mind’s activity”—and that of the heart, as Farrington’s art draws desire out to longing, from the familiar to the exotic, lowly to lofty, in Catskill country poems and Brooklyn city poems.
The pleasure begins in effortless, exacting metaphors that create (for instance) space for the “orchestral silence” of heat lightning, the “rogue shapes” of clouds, the “buffed dominos” of Holstein cows,” the “starlight / beading like solder on a running brook.” Her imaging steadies our gaze on what we seldom glimpse of bird or bush or hill or people, for that matter. Her heart is in the right place, which helps ours get there too.
The poems take on large ecological, cultural, personal and other issues in playing out their dramas. Consider Robbie (“Counterweight”), a farmer pressed by his wife to kill a fox that had taken two of his Bantam roosters to feed her kits. He should kill the fox, but the fox is old, he knows, probably on her last litter. He resolves the small war in him, coming down on the side of the angels: “Pardon was Robbie’s province. / Sharpening, silvering, the old mother would persist / as long as rough gods bid before her fade into the mists / the island made.” And he’d be rewarded with “hatchings and crowings since.”
There should be plenty of crowing and hosanna-singing over Margot Farrington’s The Blue Canoe of Longing. Or maybe better would be paying quiet attention and being forwarded within ourselves, with new ranges for the mind’s activity.
The Blue Canoe of Longing by Margot Farrington. Dos Madres, October 2019.
About the reviewer: Robert Bensen’s Before (2019) is his sixth book of poems. He taught at Hartwick College (1978-2017), now conducts the poetry workshop at Bright Hill Press.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The thumbnails of the Fall 2019 of Court Green mostly show silhouetted scenes of courtship—men playing musical instruments or bowing on knees before women, scenes of dancing and kissing. In her two poems, Maureen Thorson writes of a different sort of relationships and intimacy, instead focusing on family. Continue reading “Maureen Thorson Taps into Tenderness & Family”
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The writers in Volume 6 of Runestone Journal have questions. In poetry, Lex Chilson asks, “Why Am I Always Sadder During the Summer?” and in fiction, Gabraella Wescott narrator wants to know “Would God Have a Beach House?” while Holley Ziemba’s character wonders “Do I Miss Myself?” Continue reading “Runestone Journal Has Questions”
A new issue of The Shore features poetry by: Julia Bouwsma, Charlie M. Brown, Nicholas Samaras, Sarah Marquez, Nicholas Holt, Rachel Small, Noah Stetzer, Kathryn de Lancellotti, Molly Tenenbaum, Kathryn Merwin, Jenny Irish, Nicholas Molbert, Alicia Hoffman, TW Selvey, Anna Sandy-Elrod, Clifford Brooks, Stephen Furlong, and many more. It also features stunning photography by Melissa Marsh.
The Spring 2020 issue of Sheila-Na-Gig Online features the Spring Poetry Contest Winner and honorable mentions as well as poetry by T-M Baird, Rose Mary Boehm, Doug Bolling,R.T. Castleberry, Alan Catlin, Susan Darlington, Kelly Dolejsi, Tyler Dunston, Rob Hunter, Glenn Ingersoll, Stephanie Kendrick, Mercedes Lawry, Betsy Mars, Tom Montag, John Palen, Robert Strickland, Laura Grace Weldon, and more.
The Spring 2020 of Leaping Clear is out. This issue encourages readers to find balance in troubling times. Essays by Amy Sugeno, Dorian Rolston, and more; fiction by Anita Feng; mixed media by Barbara Parmet and Deborah Kennedy; music by Jon Tho; poetry by Ben Gallagher, Kathleen Hellen, Stephen Fulder, Yasmin Kloth, and more; video by Zangmo Alexander; and visual art by Denise Susanne Townsend, Michele Giulvezan-Tanner, and Stephanie Peek.
The Spring 2020 issue of Witness features the winners of their latest Witness Literary Awards.
Poetry Winner:
“Future Ruins” by Andrew Collard
Poetry Runner-up:
“You Will See It Coming & You Won’t Run” by Emmy Newman
Fiction Winner:
“Delivery” by Emily Greenberg
Poetry Runner-up:
“The Dramatic Haircut” by Kristina Ten
Nonfiction Winner:
“When a Child Offends” by Michele Sharpe
Nonfiction Runner-up:
“Ani-la and Anne-la: On Everything I Knew and Didn’t Know” by Anne Liu Kellor
Poetry was selected by Heather Lang-Cassera, fiction was selected by Kristen Arnett, and nonfiction was selected by José Roach-Orduña. The rest of the issue is “magic” themed, so grab a copy and discover the magic inside.
Deadline: May 15, 2020
The Voices Project is taking submissions of poetry or prose in response to the current global health crisis. We believe self expression can be therapeutic for many people and promote empathy during uncertain times. We are interested in hearing your perspective, your reality, and also writings of hope. What did people do to help you or others? What acts of compassion have you witnessed? Prose, no longer than 350 words. Include a short thoughtful bio (160 words or less) with your submission. Multiple submissions welcome, no more than 2. We do not take anonymous submissions. Submit through our website:
www.thevoicesproject.org/submit.html.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The October 2019 issue of About Place Journal takes readers on a journey from north (truth) to south (courage) to east (rebirth) to west (mourning). I immediately connected with a poem found in the north: “Flint” by Kendra Preston Leonard.
It would be hard to find someone who hasn’t heard about Flint, Michigan at this point. In early 2014, the city (which is only about a forty-five-minute drive from my home and is home to a handful of my friends) was in the news for their water crisis. After changing water sources to save money, residents were left with lead-poisoned water, an on-going issue in the city and the state.
Leonard writes about this in “Flint,” the speaker asking readers to “Come and drink,” “this acid” and “the sweet sweet leaded water,” to “Drink / and drink / and drink/ down this styx.” She invites those with distance to “Find out what it is to stand you here,” “where the river / adds children to the cemetery.” This lessens the distance between watching the information on the news and leading readers to really considering the humans that have been harmed by water, something that’s necessary to live.
Leonard’s imagery is enjoyable to read, despite the gravity of the poem’s message. The piece reads smoothly, flowing like a river. “Flint” is a great place to start your journey into this issue of About Place.
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, publisher of online lit mag Sheila-Na-Gig online, is not just celebrating the release of two new titles Robert DeMott’s collection of prose poems, Up Late Reading Birds of America, and Barbara Sabol’s Imagine a Town) but also two new titles in the hopper.
First they have their first-ever fiction title. This will be a re-release of John Bullock’s novel Mark Small: This is Your Life. It was previously titled Making Faces. This is a coming-of-age story set at the British seaside.
The winner of their Spring Poetry Contest, Kari Gunter-Seymour, has agreed to let them publish her forthcoming chapbook A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen. Stay tuned for more information on these titles and grab a copy of their current releases.
Oh, and don’t forget their Poetry Manuscript Contest is open through July 1 annually.
In Southeast Review‘s special Online content, John Sibley Williams interviews José Angel Araguz, a CantoMundo fellow, author of several chapbooks and collections, and the Editor-in-Chief of Salamander.
Araguz talks about how place, specifically Corpus Christi, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, has defined him, his work, and his politics.
Not only is my family’s story scattered across these two places, but some of the essential issues of our times play out on this border: immigration from a variety of countries (not just Mexico), narcotraffico, and the ensuing violence against women, children, and the poor. There is no memory that isn’t tinged with darkness, with threat and danger.
Since Araguz’s work does feature a lot of his own culture, he is asked how he approaches work to make it universal to readers of all cultures and his response is great: “I tread carefully around the word “universal.” There’s so much instability to language that to count on a poem alone, the mere words on the page, to be universal, is to invite failure.”
Learn more about José Angel Araguz, how he crafts his poetry, and how his experiences helped form his work.
Pembroke Magazine is a literary journal from the University of North Carolina Pembroke. They publish new issues annually. Grab a copy of their 2019 issue featuring poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by writers living in eighteen states and abroad while you still can. You can also subscribe today to get your hands on the 2020 issue when it is officially released.
Muhammad Ali’s greatness dances across the page, witnessed from multiple perspectives; a frustrated writer begins receiving mysterious bars of chocolate that may or may not be driving him crazy; a long-separated couple makes love as the Twin Towers fall on TV; a vulture does its terrible and necessary work; a young man and woman enjoy the romantic machinations of fate—or something else—in Venice; a man considers the many useless skills he’s accumulated in life; a college student risks her safety by hitchhiking back to campus with a mysterious trucker; and much more. Cover art by Alexander Grigoriev.
They are currently open to submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry through April 30. You even have the option of purchasing their latest issue when you submit.
Online literary magazine Blood Orange Review hosts an annual literary contest. The winners for the 2019 contest were Benjamin Bartu for his poem “Do You Love Her”; Austin Maas for his nonfiction piece “Trigger Finger”; and Joel Streicker for his story “For the Bounty Provided Us.” Read these and more in their latest issue.
Submissions are currently open through April 30 for the 2020 contest.
Calling poets & fiction writers from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (and all those who have links to these areas), The Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s first anthology in 25 years is open for submissions—This is What America Looks Like—and we want your poetry and short fiction. We are a 47-year old nonprofit, cooperative, all-volunteer press. We 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), we are looking for 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. Deadline: June 1.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The March 2020 issue of Poetry includes a LatiNext folio with selections from The Breakbeat Poets Volume 4 forthcoming from Haymarket Books. This anthology “opposes silence and re-mixes the soundtrack of the Latinx diaspora across diverse poetic traditions” and the selection included in Poetry gives a good sampling of what to expect in this anthology releasing in April.
My favorites include “My Uncle’s Killer” by J. Estanislao Lopez, “Rules at the Juan Marcos Huelga School (Even the Unspoken Ones)” by Lupe Mendez, and “Lady Fine Is for Sugar” by Stephanie Roberts. Continue reading “See What’s Coming “LatiNext” in Poetry”
Deadline: Friday, May 15
Adanna Literary Journal is a women focused print publication. We are seeking essay, poetry, and creative nonfiction that speaks towards the experience of mothering in a time of crisis—caring for children, especially those with children in college returning from affected areas, those with younger children exposed to media and the anxiety of school shut-downs, as well as women who are caring for elderly relatives or those in the medical profession. To submit, please go to adannajournal.blogspot.com/p/submission-guidelines.html. The subject line should read “Special Issue” to distinguish this from our annual issue.
Deadline: April 15, 2020
What is this thing, hope, the tenacious part of us that makes us rise not only to the occasion, but out of bed? Dickinson acknowledges its perseverance (“never stops at all”), but sees it as a separate entity (“Yet, never, in extremity/ it asked a crumb of me”) exempt from the human element, perhaps divine. For the spring edition of The Compassion Anthology, we are looking for work that inspires this universal and at the same time intensely personal attribute without being sentimental or cliché. Hope and the Human Spirit Deadline: April 15. Details at www.compassionanthology.com/submission-guidelines.html.
The “Magic” issue of Witness features new work by: Eric Tran, Mary Lane Potter, Pamela Yenser, Alex Berge, Nina Sudhakar, Andrea Eberly, Miranda Dennis, and more. Plus, the second annual Witness Literary Awards: Andrew Collard (poetry winner), Emmy Newman (poetry runner-up), Emily Greenberg (fiction winner), Kristina Ten (fiction runner-up), Michele Sharpe (nonfiction winner), and Anne Liu Kellor (nonfiction runner-up).
Here is the latest issue of Willow Springs. This issue features Roy Bentley, Michael Hettich, Andrea Jurjević, Michael McGriff, D. Nurkse who is interviewed this issue, Ira Sukrungruang, Jackson Burgess, Dante Di Stefano, Allison Hraban, Michael Hurley, Amy Seifried, Ojo Taiye, Fritz Ward, Ryan Cannon, William Walker, and more.
Deadline: Rolling
Brush Talks is a journal of creative nonfiction, photography, and poetry related to China. We are currently seeking submissions for our next issue, to be published in the summer of 2020. This can take many forms: general essays, travel essays, profiles, memoir, and narrative nonfiction. We seek submissions about places, people, history, culture, the arts, science and technology—anything related to China that is well written, creative, and true (we do not publish fiction). No submission fee. Please visit our website for more information and read the guidelines before submitting. brushtalks.com
The latest issue of THEMA explores the theme “Six Before Eighty.” Find stories, short-shorts, poems, and photographs by Matthew J. Spireng, J. J. Steinfeld, Cherie Bowers, H.B. Salzer, James “Jack” Penha, Margo Peterson, Alison Arntz, Lisa Timpf, Lynda Fox, Yuan Changming, Georgia A. Hubley, Annie Percik, Robert Wooten, Larry Lefkowitz, and Virginia Howard.
The Spring 2020 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly celebrates “Grandparents and Other Wise Ancestors.” Featured artists include Karla Van Vliet, Julia Michie Bruckner, Paul Polydorou, and Sheri Vanermolen. Featured writers include Claire Ibarra, Angela Wright, Marianne Mersereau, Janet Sunderland, Gail Tyson, Ilene Dube, Wayne Lee, Douglas Cole, Marc Morgenstern, Denise Tolan, Kaia Gallagher, Anna Leigh Morrow, and Joe Cottonwood.
American Life in Poetry: Column 782
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I’ve mentioned the anthology, Local News: Poetry About Small Towns from MWPH Books, P.O. Box 8, in Fairwater, Wisconsin. Here’s one of the many poems I’ve enjoyed, by Scott Wiggerman, who lives in New Mexico. His latest book is Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, published by purple flag, 2015.
Johnsburg
At the top of the hill, a towering
Catholic church with Gothic spires,
below, a one-pump gas station,
a beauty parlor with a picture window,
at the town’s only four-way stop sign,
a convenience store with a bike stand,
and three smoke-drenched taverns,
their bars of the same solid wood
as the church’s hard benches,
only more polished, more worn down.
We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2019 by Scott Wiggerman, “Johnsburg,” from Local News: Poetry About Small Towns, (MWPH Books, 2019). Poem reprinted by permission of Scott Wiggerman and the publisher. Introduction copyright @2020 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
“Social Poetics” Uncovers the Poetry of Everyday Workers. By Harris Feinsod. In These Time.
Goldman and Antonio both participated in the Worker Writers School (WWS), founded by poet and activist Mark Nowak, who has offered creative writing workshops with trade unions and social movements since 2005. In Nowak’s stirring new book, Social Poetics, he documents how writing workshops can embolden workers who, to paraphrase Trinidadian historian and writer C.L.R. James, seek to chronicle their own struggles “to regain control over their own conditions of life.”
…Nowak’s work follows in the tradition of Langston Hughes, whose 1947 essay, “My Adventures as a Social Poet,” turned away from lyric poems of individual experience to the poetry of social commitment, poems that “stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color lines and colonies.” Social Poetics relates the history of this tradition: Young English Professor Celes Tisdale and the Abenaki author Joseph Bruchac, for example, created poetry classes in prisons (which included participants in the 1971 Attica uprising).
In 2020 Driftwood Press will offer two courses in its Seminar Series. The first is an Erasure Poetry Seminar instructed by Jerrod Schwarz. He is an instructor of creative writing at the University of Tampa and his own erasure poetry has appeared in PANK, Entropy, Poets Reading the News, and the Plath Project. Applications open through April 30. This course will run five weeks from June 1 through July 3. The course is entirely online.
The next course is the Editors & Writers Seminar. This is a five week online class designed for writers submitting to magazines, for writers who want to be editors of short fiction or literary magazines, and writers who want to become better editors of their own work and others’. The course will be limited to 20 students. Applications are open through April 30. Managing fiction editor of Driftwood Press, James McNulty is the instructor. The course will run from June 1 through July 3.
The Winter/Spring 2020 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review ends with a special feature—”Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada.” This literary anthology is co-edited by Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, Sarah Henzi, Sam McKegney, and Warren Cariou, who are interviewed as an introduction to their selections.
The selected winners and finalists of the Indigenous Voices Awards featured in this issue are: Mika Lafond, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Elaine McArthur, Treena Chambers, Joshua Whitehead, Nazbah Tom, Amanda Peters, Marie-Andrée Gill, Smokii Sumac, Tenille K. Campbell, Francine Merasty, J.D. Kurtness, Naomi Fontaine, Aviaq Johnston, Brandi Bird, David Agecoutay, Dawawn Dumont, and Carleigh Baker. Their work includes both poetry and prose.
Grab a copy of the latest issue of AQR to listen to the varied indigenous voices of Canada.
Deadline: November 15, 2020
Science is among the most creative of human endeavors. From ancient depictions of scientists and scientific phenomena to contemporary graphic novel formats, from Frankenstein to recent best-selling novels dealing with such themes as pharmacology and climate change, and from memoirs on scientific discovery to essays on “life in the lab,” the people and ideas of science continue to capture our imaginations. We seek work that incorporates ideas, language, characters, main or sub-themes, images, and artwork related to STEM expansively imagined and rendered. Full call: halmagazine.wordpress.com/submit/submit-to-hal-magazine. Send submissions or queries to halscienceissue@gmail.com.
Deadline: April 30, 2020
The Sandeen Prize in Poetry is open to any author, with the exception of ND graduates, who has published at least one collection of poetry. We pay special attention to second volumes. A $15 administrative fee should accompany submissions. Make checks payable to University of Notre Dame. The volumes of the Sandeen Prize will be published in trade paperback format. The author will be offered a standard contract with the University of Notre Dame Press. There will be a $1,000 prize, a $500 award, and a $500 advance against royalties from the Notre Dame Press. Submission information on program website: english.nd.edu/creative-writing/.
Submissions accepted year-round.
The Voices Project (www.thevoicesproject.org), a literary journal, mainly for women and girls, is taking submissions of poetry or prose. We are currently looking to publish the work of poets who
have not yet been published on this site. Prose, no longer than 250 words. Include a short thoughtful bio (160 words or less) with your submission. Multiple submissions welcome, no more than 2. We no longer take anonymous submissions. Check our site and see what we may be missing and submit something to that accord, if inclined. Submit through our website:
www.thevoicesproject.org/submit.html.
Since 1990, literary magazine THEMA has been publishing issues focusing on unique themes. Their latest issue is themed “Six Before Eighty” and features work by Matthew J. Spireng, J. J. Steinfeld, Cherie Bowers, H.B. Salzer, James “Jack” Penha, Margo Peterson, Alison Arntz, Lisa Timpf, Lynda Fox, Yuan Changming, Georgia A. Hubley, Annie Percik, Robert Wooten, and Larry Lefkowitz.
Interested in trying your hand at writing short stories, short-shorts, and poems on a theme? Check out the upcoming themes and deadlines.
Runestone Journal proudly announces Volume 6, featuring: creative nonfiction from Hannah Baumgardt and True Dabill, fiction from Maryetta Henry, Gabraella Wescott, and Holley Ziemba; poetry from Lex Chilson, Marina Fec, arizona hurn, Maya Salemeh, Adam D. Weeks, and more; author interviews with Roy G. Guzmán and John Ostrander; and book reviews by the Student Editorial Board. Visit NewPages for more new issues.
Plume releases new poetry every month. In this month’s featured selection, find the second installment of the “5 under 35 Plus” feature with twelve poems by six exceptional poets: JK Anowe, Charlotte Covey, Benjamin Garcia, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Lindsay Lusby, and Sarah Uheida. Alfred Corn provides five flash for the nonfiction section, and Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Paisley Rekdal’s Nightingale. Plus, more in this month’s regular poetry selections.
The Mar/Apr Kenyon Review features a special prose section, “The Unexpected,” guest-edited by Jaquira Díaz. Díaz selected work by Lars Horn, Gabriel Louis, Rebecca Nison, Joseph Earl Thomas, Laurie Thomas, and LaToya Watkins. In addition, the issue includes the winning essay and two runners-up from our 2019 Short Nonfiction Contest: “Hello, Fridge” by Anna Hartford, “Saving Luna” by KT Sparks, and “The Great Glass Closet” by Benjamin Garcia. The issue also includes poetry by Erin Belieu, Destiny O. Birdsong, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Heid E. Erdrich, Linda Gregerson, Ted Kooser, Sally Wen Mao, Michael McGriff, and Bruce Snider.
Love on the mind? Visit Ecotone‘s “The Love Issue.” Inside, Jennifer Tseng & Amanda Tseng envision their father, Sarah Seldomridge & Eduardo Espada draw the beginnings of a family, Silas House sings of a boy’s first love, and Jennifer Elise Foerster reads Jane Johnston Schoolcraft. Plus, sonnets, rondels prime, sonzals, and brefs double, from Chad Abushanab, Ashley M. Jones, Amit Majmudar, and A. E. Stallings.
The March 2020 issue of Diode Poetry Journal is with brand new poetry by TR Brady, Brandon Jordan Brown, Sarah A. Chavez, Brian Glaser, Sarah Gridley, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, KA Hays, Kathleen Heil, Janiru Liyanage, Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, Luisa Caycedo-Kimura & Dean Rader, Virginia Konchan, Amit Majmudar, Christopher McCurry, Cindy Hunter Morgan, JoAnna Novak, Meghan Privitello, Iliana Rocha, Daniel Ruiz, Aaron Samuels, Nate Slawson, Kelly Grace Thomas, Svetlana Turetskaya, Jorrell Watkins, Rewa Zeinati, and Jane Zwart.
The Fall 2019 issue of Cimarron Review offers poetry by Jacqueline Winter Thomas, Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson, Luke Patterson, Ainsley Kelly, Anne Delana Reeves, Khaleel Gheba, Zach Mueller, Dayna Patterson, Laura Green, Adam Clay, Sophia Stid, Margaret Cipriano, G.C. Waldrep, and Athena Kildegaard; fiction by Robin Becker, Catherine Wong, JP Gritton, and Clancy McGlligan; and nonfiction by Danielle Thien. Our cover art is “Esotrope” by Monica McFawn.
AQR’s Winter & Spring 2020 edition features stories by Joy Lanzendorfer, Elise Juska, Matthew Lansburgh, and Patricia Page. Also featured are stories by Katya Apekina, Molly Gutman, Daniel Pearce, and Kirsten Madsen. The edition also includes three engaging personal essays, an exceptional collection of poems by twenty-four poets, and a special anthology “Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada.” These voices include Mika Lafond, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Smokii Sumac, Tenille K. Campbell, Francine Merasty, J.D. Kurtness, Brandi Bird, and more.
The Winter 2020 issue of Qu Literary Magazine is out. Fiction by Renay Costa and Kevin M. Kearny; nonfiction by Jackie Kenny and Stephanie Dickinson; and poetry by Betty Rosen, nicole v basta, Sara Moore Wagner, Tom C. Hunley, Kelly Weber, and Elsa Ball. Patricia Powell provides “On Listening” in our “The Writing Life” section, and in stage/screen writing: Kate McMorran and Libby M. Gardner.
The latest issue of The 2River View features poems by Bruce Alford, Josette Akresh-Gonzales, Matthew Freeman, Abriana Jetté, Brady Thomas Kamphenkel, Tanner Lee, Tatiana Retivov, Samn Stockwell, Teresa Sutton, and John Whalen. Art from this issue is by Megan Duncanson.
Online literary magazine Blood Orange Review released Volume 11.2 in January 2020. This issue was delayed a bit as they worked hard on relaunching their site with a new design.
The majority of artwork featured in this issue was gathered from visual art MFA students at Washington University: Siri Margaret Stensberg, Stephanie Broussard, and Kelsey Baker. Also featured in this issue is art from Sarah Hussein who hales from Egypt.
Besides art, find poetry by Hussain Ahmed, Benjamin Bartu, John Byrne, Isiah Fish, Joseph Gunho Jang, Maya Marshall, and Kim Young; nonfiction by Sarah Rose Cadorette, Kelly Hill, and Austin Maas; and fiction by Wandeka Gayle, Arielle Jones, Sakae Manning, Lois Melina, and Joel Streicker.
Blood Orange Review is currently open to general and contest submissions.
Deadline: June 1, 2020
Lynx House Press seeks submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts for the annual Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication. Entries must be at least 48 pages in length. The fee for submitting is $28, and includes a copy of a book from our catalog. Previous judges include James Tate, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, Dara Wier, Melissa Kwasny, and Robert Wrigley. lynxhousepress.submittable.com/submit
Rattle’s special features always help spice up an issue. It’s fun to see what has been included in each issue’s theme and how the writers fit inside it. In the Spring 2020 issue, readers can find a “special tribute section of poems written by students of Kim Addonizio’s poetry workshops (as well as one poem by Kim herself).” An interview with Addonizio is also included after the poetry selections. In addition to her poems, there are pieces by sixteen of her students covering a wide array of topics. Parenthood, love for pets, politics, sex, and suicide just scratch the surface of what these poets focus on in this feature. Grab yourself a copy of this issue of Rattle to discover the full selection Addonizio and her students offer us.
The Red Wheelbarrow Review, formerly Red Savina Review (est. 2013), is open for submissions. The editors have a fresh focus in line with poet Rich Murphy’s concern that literature is in need of “prophetic voices now.” We seek poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction where word meets spirit in a commingling of the sacred and mundane. We have published writers such as Sharman Apt Russell, winner of the John Burroughs Medal; Rich Murphy, winner of the Gival Press Poetry Prize; Khanh Ha, winner of the Robert Watson Literary Prize; bestselling memoirist Gleah Powers; and many others. Submission guidelines at theredwheelbarrowreview.com/submissions/.
Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis for the 9th annual Chesapeake Writers’ Conference. The event takes place June 21 through 27. This year’s faculty includes Liz Arnold, Matt Burgess, Patricia Henley, Crystal Brandt, Angela Pelster, and Matthew Henry Hall.
This year they will be offering workshops in songwriting along with workshops in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, translation, and creative nonfiction. They also offer craft talks, lectures, readings, and panel discussions, plus a youth workshop.
Scholarships, course credit, and continuing professional development are also available. There is no fee to apply. Learn more…
Deadline: April 1, 2020
19th year. Free contest sponsored by Winning Writers and Duotrope. $2,250 in cash prizes, including a top prize of $1,000. Both published and unpublished work welcome. All entries that win cash prizes will be published on WinningWriters.com. Final judge: Jendi Reiter, assisted by Lauren Singer Ledoux. Winning Writers is one of “101 Best Websites for Writers” (Writer’s Digest). See guidelines, past winners, and submit one humor poem online at winningwriters.com/wergle.
The objective of Nzuri (meaning Beautiful/Fine in Swahili) is to promote the artistic, aesthetic, creative, and scholarly work consistent with the values and ideals of Umoja community. Additionally, we accept work responsive to the experience of the African and African-American diaspora. African American and other writers, digital media content creators, photographers, and artists are urged to submit their best work for consideration. Check out our current call for submissions for Nzuri‘s Spring 2020 issue at nzuriumojacommunity.submittable.com. See our current issue online at Nzurijournal.com.