We went on our first long road trip of the year this past weekend. The reasons for it were sad, but we got to see a lot more of our great state. We passed by fields, forests, and weren’t too far from Lake Michigan, but the afternoon rain kept us from lighthouse hunting. We even got to stop at a little ice cream stand that is celebrating 10 years in business and got to witness an old man having fun chatting it up with the owner who he was complaining to that he had visited three times, and this was his first time getting to see her. Local and small businesses are so vital and entrenched in our communities.
Road trips are great times and great memories. Something fun to put into your itinerary has you travel this summer? Bookstores! If you find a store that we don’t currently list in our Guide to Indie Bookstores during your travels, please let us know about it!
Discover fledgling publications and the latest issues of your favorites on the NewPages Magazine Stand. The Lake June 2024 issue features work by Stephen Boyce, Theresa Heine, Angi Holden, Sarah James, and book reviews. Later this week, dive into the Spring 2024 issue of Baltimore Review which features poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by Kaique Antonio, Bobby Bangert, Amy Boyes, Sara R. Burnett, and many more. Meanwhile, the Summer 2024 issue of The 2River View is now available with new poems by Sally Van Doren, Kami Enzie, Susanna Lang, Melanie H. Manuel, to name a few contributors.
On June 12, learn more about ISSUED: stories of service. When Phoenix, Arizona Poet Laureate Rosemarie Dombrowski was asked by the Office of Veteran and Military Academic Engagement (OVMAE) at Arizona State University to produce a military-themed issue of another literary journal that she was running, she was ready for a new challenge. “I asked if I could create a new journal instead,” Dombrowski explains, “one that exclusively featured the stories of veterans – either written by veterans or their family members.”
In book news, stop by the NewPages Book Stand to discover new titles to add to your must-read lists. Tomorrow you can learn more about Karoline Anderson’s Killer Insight which is forthcoming from Flare Books this September. The novel follows Detective Kaitlyn Kruse and her partner Joe Riley on a murder investigation that uncovers multiple bodies that all look like Kaitlyn. Can her past selves help her solve the mystery?
Coming in July from Owl Canyon Press, Justin Courter’s Cadenza follows a piano virtuoso who is severely scarred thanks to a house fire that happened in her childhood. As she has a meteoric rise as a virtuoso, her disfigurements take on mythic proportions to her. Can meeting and falling in love with a suicidal musician save her before she self-destructs?
Inspiration is what you make of it, isn’t it? The world around us is full of it if we can only open ourselves up to it. And what can be more inspiring than…cabbage? Yes, cabbage. This vegetable is very versatile. It can be boiled, stir fried, fried, baked as wedges, served raw in salads like coleslaw, and fermented to make sauerkraut. You can even make cabbage pancakes, aka okonomiyaki. How is that not inspiring?
Food aside, it’s memories as well. Memories of childhood where a petite grandmother used to select the perfect head of cabbage from the first batch of early fall produce to make her own homemade sauerkraut or her spending hours carefully peeling the cabbage leaves to boil and stuff for pigs in a blanket for supper that night.
It’s memories of watching old John Wayne westerns with a grandfather and North to Alaska comes on and you learn the term of endearment mon petite chou means “my little cabbage.”
What little memories do you have that come out over the most random things in the strangest ways? Do you have memories of cabbage? Can you write an ode about it or complain in a lyric essay about why you hate it? Can you relate to us your awe in watching your best friend’s little sister completely learn and perform Weird Al’s “Albuquerque”?
Calls, Contests, & More
Below are this week’s writing contests, calls for submissions, and literary and writing events. Enjoy 42 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.
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