A special section devoted to Graphic Nonfiction, showcasing seven writers and artists from around the globe, headlines the Spring 2020 issue of World Literature Today. The issue also presents interviews with translators Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Isabel Fargo Cole; new fiction from Italy, France, and the Philippines; essays on Nigerian fiction and the “humanity on display” in museum exhibitions; poetry by Elyas Alavi (Afghanistan), Khaled Mattawa (Libya/US), and Mohamad Nassereddine (Lebanon); and Poupeh Missaghi’s recommended booklist about cities. More than forty book reviews also round out the issue, giving readers a wealth of titles to inspire their spring reading adventures.
Reviews
NewPages Mag Stand: Plume
The April issue of Plume is at the NewPages Mag Stand. This month’s featured selection: Christopher Salerno interviewed by Nancy Mitchell, with work by the poet included. Chad DeNiord in the essay & comment section. Mark Wagenaar reviews three new books on armed conflict and armed service. Plus our monthly poetry selections, which you can learn more about at the Mag Stand.
Weekly Roundup for Calls & Contests :: April 3, 2020
Breathe deep, pull out that old manuscript about alien hamsters, and get to editing! Or…just write to relieve your mind. Or, better yet, dive into that pile of books that you’ve been meaning to read. If you do the latter, let NewPages know about it! We are currently accepting guest posts on what you’re reading. Learn more about this opportunity here.
Want an early look at places accepting general and contest submissions? Subscribe to the NewPages Newsletter. Not only do you get submission opportunities delivered weekly to your inbox (many times before they get posted to our site), but you get access to our special monthly eLitPaks.
Calls for Submissions
Don’t forget you can keep up-to-date with all open calls for submissions at the NewPages website.
Do you know young writers or are a parent of one? Help them submit to these markets open to younger writers (from elementary to undergraduate ages).
April Submission Deadlines
BALLOONS Lit. Journal. COVID-19 Response. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, cross-genre, art, photography. No fee. Deadline: April 11. They seek work to bring warmth to their young readers.
Do you have any fun or heartwarming winter holiday stories? Chicken Soup for the Soul would like to read them. You can submit true poems and stories through April 30 on this theme. Writers are paid $200 and receive ten free copies of the book in which their work appears.
Fleas on the Dog. Issue 6. Fiction, poetry, plays, screenplays, nonfiction. No fee. Deadline: April 30.
Are you a translator? Consider submitting poetry translated from Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Latin, and Classical Greek to English. Transference especially would love poetry related to the theme of vision/seeing. There is no fee to submit. The deadline to send them poetry, commentary, and essays on the translation of poetry is April 30. [Read more…] about Weekly Roundup for Calls & Contests :: April 3, 2020
Call :: The Revolution (Relaunch) Wants Your Creative Activism
Deadline: Rolling
Founded in July of 2019, The Revolution (Relaunch) is a creative resurgence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 1868 publication, The Revolution, which was the official newspaper of the National Women’s Suffrage Association. Like any good 19th century newspaper (or any good 21st century zine), we publish a range of styles—memoir, poetry, cultural criticism, interviews, and profiles featuring activists and grassroots organizations. Our focus is feminism in the broadest sense—in other words, we’re interested in “creative activism” that voices the marginalized and/or criticizes corrupt authority. Submit one piece of prose under 750 words, three poems, or 5 images to therevolutionrelaunch@gmail.com.
What Are You Reading?
What are you reading?
We’re sure plenty of you are taking this social distancing downtime to do some reading, and we’d love to hear about it. Whether it’s a new issue of your favorite lit mag, the book you’ve just added to your shelf, or one piece of poetry or prose that really spoke to you, we’re looking forward to your recommendations.
Share the love
What have you connected with recently? Who said those words that kept you going through another day? How have you re-read a favorite given what is going on?
Send us an email with a brief review (125-300 words) and a short bio (25 words max) and we’ll share it with our users on our blog and across our social media accounts.
Your bio can include a link to your blog or web URL to let our readers discover more about your work.
Once your guest blog post appears, you are welcome to share it through your social media to help keep our literary community actively engaged.
Have questions?
Contact Katy — katyhaas@newpageswork.com
Where to send your review
Send your guest blog post review to info@newpageswork.com. Katy or Nicole will reply to confirm receipt.
Examples (with word counts)—the titles link to the individual blog post:
Take a Walk Down “One Narrow Street in Tokyo” (158-word poetry review)
There’s something simple and sweet in “One Narrow Street in Tokyo” by L. Davis, published in the Winter 2020 issue of The Main Street Rag, and it’s that simplicity that drew me into it. The language is sparse, and so is the poem itself, taking up just a tiny sliver of text on each side of the page.
Davis captures a small section of time in which life changes for a girl, a life so fleeting compared to that of the shrine she passes. A nearly mystical aura lingers around the fox that watches from its home in the shrine. Davis uses no punctuation used in this piece, sweeping readers up into the scene and to the end in one seamless motion. I read it over and over, letting it wash over me, my eye originally caught by the poem’s formatting. Short and sweet, it’s a good place to start with this issue of The Main Street Rag.
About the reviewer: Katy Haas is Assistant Editor at NewPages. Recent poetry can be found in Taco Bell Quarterly, petrichor, and other journals. She regularly blogs at: https://newpagesblog.com/.
Bite-sized Bit of Literary Horror (273-word book review)
Christopher Locke’s 25 Trumbulls Road, 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition Winner, is twenty-two pages of eerie enjoyment. The chapbook reads like five short horror films. Each story is called a “case” and is labeled with a date, which makes them feel a little more real despite remaining firmly planted in the surreal and fantastic. The cases are then broken up into numbered “exhibits,” some of which have been redacted. These redacted sections further steep the stories in mystery—what has been removed and why?
Each story, except one, starts similarly: a family moves into a new home and begins to experience unexplainable events. A woman comes to the newcomer in a dream and leads her into the woods, characters hear source-less voices, objects thrown away return as if tethered to the homeowners. Sure, these are tropes we’ve seen in horror movies for years, but there’s something fresh and poetic about Locke’s little stories. There’s no reliance on special effects or visual jump scares. The horror is all in our imaginations, brought to life by Locke’s straight forward prose. With the short length of the stories, we’re immediately plunged into the darkness with little room to catch our breaths before another tale is introduced.
I read the chapbook while in public, during the middle of the day, sure that if I saved it for my bedtime reading, I’d be too creeped out to sleep soundly. And this is exactly what I want out of a book like this: to be both creeped out and impressed. Locke manages to do both in limited space. 25 Trumbulls Road is a perfectly bite-sized bit of literary horror.
25 Trumbulls Road by Christopher Locke. Black Lawrence Press, February 2020.
About the reviewer: Katy Haas is Assistant Editor at NewPages. Recent poetry can be found in Taco Bell Quarterly, petrichor, and other journals. She regularly blogs at: https://newpagesblog.com/.
NewPages Magazine Stand: Runestone Journal
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.
NewPages Magazine Stand: Plume
Plume releases new poetry every month. This week, find them at NewPages. 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.
Weekly Roundup for Calls & Contests :: March 6, 2020
Welcome to the first week of March! How are your submission goals coming? If you opted to stay home from AWP in San Antonio this year, why not keep pursuing your submission goals? Check out current calls for general and contest submissions below.
Calls for Submissions
Don’t forget you can keep up-to-date with all open calls for submissions at the NewPages website. Do you know young writers or are a parent of one? Help them submit to these markets open to younger writers (from elementary to undergraduate ages).
March Submission Deadlines
March 20 is the deadline to submit poetry chapbook manuscripts to Green Linden Press for its open reading period. Chapbooks will be published in Fall 2020. They ask you read recent issues of their online literary magazine Under A Warm Green Linden for an idea of what excites them. They do charge a reading fee to help support their green mission.
Hamilton Stone Review. No. 42. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. No fee. Deadline: March 22. [Read more…] about Weekly Roundup for Calls & Contests :: March 6, 2020
NewPages Magazine Stand: Crossways Literary Magazine
The latest issue of Crossways can be found at the NewPages Magazine Stand. This issue includes poetry by Sinead McClure, Mary Kathryn Jablonski, Timothy Gordan, Beth McDonough, Milton Ehrlich, Breda Joyce, Susie Gharib, Alun Robert, and more; fiction by Patrick Doherty, J. Scott Hardin, Chuck Teixeira, Max Dunbar, and Fiona Billie Lawlor; and a book review by Nicola Spendlove.
NewPages Magazine Stand: Plume
Plume‘s February 2020 issue can be found at the Magazine Stand this week. This issue’s featured selection is “Engraved Phrases on Open Seas: Poems and Notes on Translations of Khal Torabully” by Nancy Naomi Carlson. Charles Simic pens an “Essay on the Prose Poem,” and Mark Wagenaar reviews Mark Irwin’s Shimmer. Poets in this issue include Sawnie Morris, William Logan, Mary Jo Salter, Mark Irwin, Kim Addonizio, Andrea Cohen, Adam Scheffler, and more.
NewPages Magazine Stand: The Main Street Rag
Visit the Magazine Stand for the latest issue of Main Street Rag. The Winter 2020 issue includes featured interview “Living for the Day” with Laura Thurston by Richard Allen Taylor. Also in this issue, find fiction by Nancy Bourne, Michael Gaspeny, Nick Gardner, Don Stoll, Laurence Levey, and Michael Washburn; poetry by Joan Bauer, Ace Boggess, Les Brown, Brian Fanelli, Mary Alice Dixon, Sean Thomas Doherty, Vicki Mandel-King, Gerard Sarnat, Sibani Sen, Young Smith, and more; plus a selection of five book reviews.