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YA Representation from Chloe Gong

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Guest Post by Skylar Edwards.

Shakespeare meets Shanghai in this Romeo and Juliet retelling with a monstrous twist. Chloe Gong modernizes a familiar, yet different, plot sequence, with relevant characters and battles against colonialism, while honoring classical themes: love, hate, and loyalty. Roma and Juliette align to fight a monster, while navigating the dangers of a blood feud, gangster-run Shanghai, and foreign powers. As heirs to the competing gangs, Roma and Juliette have the most to lose and the stakes have never been higher.

Juliette returns from America to find that the life she once knew has changed and she struggles to redefine herself within Shanghai. Her loyalty to the Scarlet Gang is tested against the disputing territories quickly rising to power: rival gangs, communists, and colonizers. Tensions rise as she is forced to collaborate with her former lover, Roma of the White Flowers.

Gong paves the way for YA representation and creates authenticity by normalizing diverse characters, each with a unique perspective. In the story’s web, intertwined with queer and cultural identities, readers discover the Scarlet Gang are Chinese, while The White Flowers are primarily Russian. Sparks emerge between same-sex characters and readers discover that one gang member identifies as transgender.

Readers assume the antagonist is the monster who has released a plague of madness on Shanghai. However, Gong uses the monster-hunt trope to highlight who the real enemy is: each other. Two lovers and liars must put aside their differences, and convince others to do the same, before it is too late. Readers are left with a disastrous ending, where competing territories turn on each other and release the real monsters into Shanghai.

“Men are sometimes masters of their own fates.” —Shakespeare

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong. Margaret K. McElderry Books, November 2020.

Reviewer bio: Primarily a bookish fanatic working with nonprofits, Skylar is also a micro-influencer on BookTok; follow TwiceReadTales for more!

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Exploring the Depths of the Voice

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Guest Post by Brooke M. Smith

Poet and essayist Jessica Sabo explores the depths of the voice within her collection of poems. A Body of Impulse offers a magnifying lens into a woman’s life reflections. An Adelaide Literary Award in Poetry finalist (2020), Sabo lays bare a rawness leaving the reader to feel commiseration with her protagonist.

In “What I Should Have Said Instead of ‘Nothing,'” Sabo’s use of metaphors and imagery detail the pain and process of wanting to be understood:

It is a cancer, mom
eating me alive from the inside like a plague
and I am so raw I can’t feel the pain anymore. I can’t feel anymore. I can’t anymore. This hollowing is the only time I feel whole
and I know–I know! I could fight back if I really tried
and if I really wanted it
but I don’t want it, mom. I get so tired of being the outsider. Tired of living in this body that has
never been a home. I am homesick, mom. I am sick, mom.

Reading these last stanzas of her poem provoked a question most humans ask in life: Who am I? Am I happy with who I am . . . who I’ve become?  Self-acceptance is a process, and a painful one at times. The ending of her poem “Requital“ spotlights our imperfections as women and being human.  Acceptance of our choices, learning to accept ourselves as whole and worthy, no matter the condition we are in.

Now, it is my naked body in front of a mirror
a road map of
razor scars and stretch marks, faded tattoos
piercings that refuse to close. It is here I am
learning how to say mine without stutter
refusing to apologize for taking up (too               much) sidewalk. Learning to fill the space
reserved for all my apologies.

Jessica Sabo’s beautifully threaded lines leave readers pondering these questions in her three-part poetry collection.

A Body of Impulse by Jessica Sabo. Dancing Girl Press & Studio, 2021.

Reviewer bio: Brooke M. Smith is a librarian who loves cats, coffee, cozy mysteries, camping, and many other things that don’t begin with the letter C.  She also is a poetry editor for 805 Lit + Art Magazine.

NewPages Book Stand – October 2021

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No tricks this October—just some book treats! Take a look at which titles we’ve featured this month at the Book Stand.

Amanda Paradise by CAConrad is made up of memories of loved ones who died of AIDS, the daily struggle of existing through the pandemic, and the effort to arrive at a new way of falling in love with the world as it is, not as it was.

Ashanti Anderson’s Black Under layers outward perception with internal truth to offer an almost-telescopic examination of the redundancies—and incongruences—of marginalization and hypervisibility.

The short stories in Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments by Jackson Bliss are an exploration of not just mixed-race/hapa identity in Michigan (and the American Midwest), but also of the infinite ways in which stories can be told, challenged, celebrated, and subverted.

In thirteen chapters, Laura Kalpakian’s Memory into Memoir provides a lively guide for anyone looking to wrestle the unruly past onto the page.

Also this month on the Book Stand, find new and forthcoming releases from Diode Editions including Dorothy Chan’s Babe, Shanta Lee Gander’s Ghettoclaustrophobia, and Kendra DeColo & Tyler Mills’ collaborative chapbook, Low Budget Movie.

You can learn more about each of these New & Noteworthy books at our website. Click here to see how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section.

A Journey through Food & Culture

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Guest Post by Kristina Pudlewski.

Stanley Tucci’s latest book, Taste: My Life Through Food, is wonderful. It takes readers on a journey through food and culture in the early 60’s to present day, 2021.

In the early chapters it talks about Tucci’s family life and what he grew up eating and experiencing in New York. Growing up in an Italian household means fun stories and delicious meals daily. Tucci describes both of these gracefully. His details about the food he grew up eating leaves your mouth watering and it’s extremely helpful that he also includes recipes so you can make the meals he grew up loving, at home with your own families.

I love to eat, but my pockets don’t enjoy the price that some meals cost these days. Taste: My Life Through Food gives insights into ways you can cook amazing meals on a budget and where to go in the United States and abroad to get a good, cheap, filling meal.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a love for cooking and travel. This book talks about both and it shows just how great life can be when surrounded by good food and good company.

Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci. Gallery Books, October 2021.

Reviewer bio: I am a Freelance Writer from Illinois. I love to write fiction novels, short stories and poetry. I am currently writing my first novel.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

October 2021 eLitPak :: Tartt First Fiction Award

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Screenshot of Livingston Press September, October, November, December 2021 flier for the NewPages eLitPakThis year’s co-winners were Judy Juanita of Oakland, CA. and Schuyler Dickson of Houlka, MS. Their respective books will come out in June. The deadline for the new contest is December 31. Please see our website for details. And see our forthcoming books, also. Credit cards accepted.

View the full October 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.

October 2021 eLitPak :: Alegría – Magical Realism from Madville Publishing

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Screenshot of Madville Publishing's flier for the NewPages September 2021 eLitPak
click image to open full-size flier

A narcoleptic child in a fantastical world where dead grandmothers come to visit and witch doctors prescribe waking concoctions. Sibling rivalry and secrets propel this story in which the fate of the family rests on the shoulders of a child, Alegría.

View the full October 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.

Call :: Atmosphere Press Seeks Book Manuscripts from Diverse Voices

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atmosphere press logoDeadline: Rolling
Atmosphere Press currently seeks book manuscripts from diverse voices. There’s no submission fee, and if your manuscript is selected, we’ll be the publisher you’ve always wanted: attentive, organized, on schedule, and professional. We use a model in which the author funds the publication of the book, but retains 100% rights, royalties, and artistic autonomy. This year Atmosphere authors have received featured reviews with Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, and have even appeared on a giant billboard in Times Square. Submit your book manuscript at atmospherepress.com.

Extremes of Pleasure and Passion

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Guest Post by Vikash Goyal.

George Milles is the mind of the 21st century teen. He is beautiful. He is a boy with no ambitions—unless you count wanting to live in Disneyland as one. He doesn’t know the pathways of his life and is consequently lost midway. He is passive and has a dormant attitude. His beauty is unparalleled and draws boys to him like flies to turds. But with so much attention in his life, it is still lifeless.

Cooper’s semi-autobiographical five book series is inspired by the writings of de Sade, which is quite evident while reading. Closer is the first in the series, perfectly introducing the protagonist George. The book, at times, reads like a pirated version of de Sade’s The 120 Days Of Sodom although nowhere near the majesty of it.

The teens who form the center of the book are disturbed, confused, and fake. They move around like a body without a belly button. Their only solace is in drugs and sex. They know no human bonds and let their death bound lives pass them by embroiled in perpetual flimsy relationships.

The writing is in teen lingo, but reads well enough. The book doesn’t hold on to a proper plot and is written in more of a documentary style. There is a dissection of the mind of the coming-of-age youth, spelling out the conditioning of priority-devoid teens. The book is refreshing in its matter of fact portrayal of homosexuality without the unnecessary drawing of the microscope over their sexuality or struggle.

George, the protagonist, is the thread in the book that binds the different unique characters, who at some point, share a liaison with him. Not one character in the book is sure and positive about his life, including a couple of characters in their forties. The book tries to encapsulate the extremes of pleasure and passion through episodes of gross torture and sexual acts, and, in a couple of cases, even death.

The book can seem to move in circles now and then, ending up becoming a few pages too many. For those that like to experiment.

Closer by Dennis Cooper. Grove, 1990.

Reviewer bio: Vikash Goyal is a writer of prose and poetry, best known for his blog “Kashivology” on WordPress, that chronicles the defining moments in the life of its protagonist, Kashiv, through a series of surrealistic, existential and philosophical prosaic poetry. He also reviews books on Instagram @Kashivology.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

‘Peculiar Heritage’

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Guest Post by Chloe Yelena Miller.

DeMisty D. Bellinger’s Peculiar Heritage opens with the title poem. She invites us—at times challenges us—to look with that first line of the title poem, “if you look at her eyes.” The collective heritage of poems moves through slavery, different regions of the US, the African diaspora in Paris, as well as more contemporary violence in America.

The collection is divided into four parts, including a break in part three with protest poems. This almost aside of protest poems, as Part III continues again with a page break, draws attention to the fact that many, if not all of these poems, are already protest poems. [Read more…] about ‘Peculiar Heritage’

Experiencing One’s Self

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Guest Post by Diana De Jesus.

Nietzsche once remarked, “In the end, one experiences only one’s self.”

The novel Hating Olivia: A Love Story by Mark SaFranko truly emphasizes this notion through the eyes of our main protagonist Max Zajack, a struggling artist and wannabe writer who lives in a rundown apartment in New Jersey. To support himself, Zajack takes on a low-paying job loading trucks for a living and playing gigs in nightclubs and bars. During one of his gigs, he meets Olivia Aphrodite, a literature student who changes his life in more ways than one. [Read more…] about Experiencing One’s Self

Contest :: 2022 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction Judged by Claire V. Foxx

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Deadline: December 31, 2021
Press 53 Award for Short Fiction: First Prize $1,000, publication, and 50 copies (ten hardcover and 40 softcover) awarded to an unpublished collection of short stories. Press 53 Short Fiction Editor, Claire V. Foxx, will judge. Enter online through Submittable. Deadline: midnight, December 31, Eastern Time. Winner and finalists announced before May 1, 2022. Reading fee: $30. Complete information, plus a list of past winners at www.press53.com/award-for-short-fiction. Questions should be directed to Kevin Morgan Watson, Publisher and Editor in Chief at kevin@press53.com or 336-770-5353