A Good Week to Stay Indoors with Literature
NewPages Newsletter #132 Featuring 38 Submission Opportunities
Dry heat or humidity being worse? Who cares. Hot is hot whether it feels like you have the lung-crushing oppression on top of being drenched in sweat or the heat where frying an egg on a sidewalk seems pretty plausible. With the majority of the United States being under a heat dome, there is no need to argue that 90+ degrees Fahrenheit with or without humidity can be pretty darn unbearable. This is a great week to have a pool. Don’t have one? The dollar stores sell kiddie pools for pretty cheap. Find some shade, fill your mini pool, get a nice icy drink, and some stellar antiglare sunglasses and you are ready to beat the heat with some great new issues of literary magazines and new and forthcoming book releases.
This is also a good week to see what is going on at your local indie bookstores. Maybe try out their new summer drink menus if they have a cafe? This is also a perfect week to hang out at your local library. Many libraries offer summer reading programs, to boot, which come with some cool things…like free books for completion. Who doesn’t like free books?
If you are a brand-new subscriber or missed it in your inbox, the June 2024 eLitPak was sent out last Wednesday with submission opportunities from The Greensboro Review, About Place, Winning Writers, and The Word Works. Plus, virtual workshop opportunities for poets from Caesura Poetry Workshop and literary agent feedback from Black Fox Literary Magazine.
Discover fledgling publications and the latest issues of your favorites on the NewPages Magazine Stand. Posting later this week, discover the 2024 issue of annual literary magazine Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry which features Dana Gioia’s libretto, Fiat Lux, dedicating Christ Cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Orange County, California, and so much more!
Meanwhile, the Spring 2024 issue of Beloit Fiction Journal welcomes readers to enjoy works by Madeleine Gallo, Banzelman Guret, and Andrew J. Hodges just to name a few contributors. The May 2024 issue of online journal Bear Review features writing that is alive on the pages, has urgency, and something at stake. Enjoy work by Erin Hoover, Wael Almahdi, Fay Dillof, Chris Bullard, Grant Chemidlin, and more.
In book news, stop by the NewPages Book Stand to discover new titles to add to your must-read lists. Justin Courter’s engrossing epic of artistic triumphs and personal disasters, Cadenza is due out from Owl Canyon Press in July. Follow Jennifer Coleman, a piano virtuoso whose meteoric rise to fame sees her childhood disfigurement from a fire bloom to epic proportions and spiral her on a path of self-destruction.
Tomorrow, you can learn more about Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson’s Rendered Paradise. They invite readers into the worlds of three major artists: Vivian Maier, Agnes Martin, and Kiki Smith. Their radical collaborative approach brings the artists’ works alive in fresh and unexpected ways.
Coming next week, you can look forward to the full list of new issues of literary magazines and new and forthcoming titles NewPages has received this month. And let us all pause here in horror to realize next week is the final full week of June.
With much of the United States being nestled inside a wave of unbearably hot weather for most of the week, why not use that to help inspire your writing? The sole episode I can remember from the original Twilight Zone (ok…it may be the only episode I ever saw) was when the earth was getting too close to the sun and the whole world was sweltering, but by the end of the episode there was a huge reversal as the world started getting much too far away from the sun.
Do you have such memories? A move or television show that made you hot and uncomfortable just like the characters on the screen? How about your school years? Did one spring get so hot and unbearable but your elementary or high school wouldn’t turn the AC on to cool you off because it wasn’t the right time yet? Were you sweltering during your first ever college essay exam and praying your sweat didn’t ruin the paper? Was your dorm so hot you felt like it was a suffocating sauna? Or did you try out a literal sauna with disastrous…or hilarious…results?
Heat can also equal many different things. Heat can bring relief to overworked muscles. Heat can mean spicy. Can you handle spicy food? Heat can also mean nasty weather in the form of violent storms brought on by hot air smashing into cold air. Heat can also mean someone who is being tracked and targeted.
Or maybe you can write a little humorous story about how you kept confusing heat dome with heat sink…you know that component in electronics designed to help keep your tech from overheating? Much like a heat pump sending the warm air in your houses back outside while providing you with some cooler air?
Even better? Let your imagination beat the heat for you and dream of ice and think and write “cool” like in Stand and Deliver where the students were learning in the middle of summer and sweating their booties off and repeating the mantra “think cool.”
So crank up the good ol’ AC unit…or turn your fans on high and start letting heat inspire you…with your favorite icy beverage of choice on hand to slake your thirst.
Calls, Contests, & More
Below are this week’s writing contests, calls for submissions, and literary and writing events. Enjoy 38 opportunities to get your work published or to enhance your writing craft. Please note: only paid subscribers get access to this information! You can become a paid subscriber for only $5 a month and get early access to submission opportunities and events before they go live on our site.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to NewPages Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.