We are back! We hope all those who celebrated Labor Day had a nice relaxing and fun weekend. Here in Michigan, we had perfect, weather with sunshine and the just right temperatures. Something a bit unexpected when I went to a craft fair and the grocery stores this weekend…August wasn’t even over and Pumpkin Spice was landing on shelves everywhere with Halloween displays and fall decorations and snacks. I do love autumn, but it is always such a shock to find fall-themed stuff, like Christmas things, coming out earlier and earlier every year.
Now is a perfect time to have some spliced or mulled apple cider and curl up with a good book or magazine. On our Magazine Stand, learn more about World Literature Today’s September/October 2024 issue which features Japanese Women Writers in the 21st Century. Such writers as Mieko Kawakami, Hitomi Kanehara, Hiroko Oyamada, and Coreco Hibino are profiled in the cover feature guest-edited by Rea Amit. The Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Salamander (58) features work by Laton Carter, Amber Silverman, Marin Sardy, Kristin Ginger, Michael Beard, Sheree La Puma, and many more! Looking for more new issues to devour? Check out our list of new issues received in August 2024.
In the symbolic language of flowers, the zinnia represents friendship, remembrance, and lasting affection, which is what inspired the name of a new online annual, The Zinnia Anthology. Here, readers can find short stories, poems, memoirs, and art focusing on human connections and relationships with each other outside of the romantic lens. Discover more about this fledgling publication in our New Lit on the Block column. Plus, come back to the Magazine Stand later in the week to learn more about the Summer 2024 issue of Chestnut Review and 805 Lit+Art’s August 2024 issue.
If you are looking for some good books to check out at your local library or indie bookstore, you can catch our monthly roundup of new and forthcoming titles received for the month of August 2024. Plus, you can head on over to our Book Stand this week to learn about The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County by I.M. Aiken releasing this month.
If you need more book recommendations, our reviewers are here to help! Jennifer Brough reviews Ecuadorian writer Gabriela Ponce’s debut novel Blood Red, that charts a 38-year-old unnamed woman’s unravelling. “Ponce pushes her character to the brink of a visceral internal void, leaving the reader akin to the narrator in ‘trying to embrace the untouchable or unnamable’ experience of this mercurial text.”
Eleanor J. Bader gives her thoughts on The Big Lie About Race in America’s Schools edited by Royel M. Johnson and Shaun R. Harper. This 13-essay collection harkens back to 2019 when scholar Nikole Hannah Jones launched the 1619 Project, a multimedia effort highlighting enslaved people’s vital contributions to U.S. economic and social development. The essays tackle how critical race theory and more issues like gender are muted and not taught in schools as they should be.
Kevin Brown reviews Sunjeev Sahota’s The Spoiled Heart: A Novel. The book follows Nayan Olak as he campaigns for General Secretary of Unify, a British trade union he’s been a member of since he began to work. His main challenger is a DEI officer who has worked there for only roughly a year. Nayan wants Unify to be color blind while his competitor believes race and racism matter as much as class.
Last, but not least, Jami Macary reviews Sally Ashton’s fifth book, Listening to Mars, which offers readers “thought experiments otherwise known as poems” while “trying to understand” the COVID-19 health crisis. Need even more recommendations? Stay tuned to discover a review of Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon.
Find Inspiration
Do you love to check something off a To Do list? Avoid doing anything you’d rather not like the plague until you have absolutely no choice but to do it? Love to create a To Do list just to burn it? Steer clear of all lists and planners because it gives you anxiety? Have you ever put a project off and it left you sore, battered, but feeling exuberant or triumphant by being able to complete it, even if it’s not perfect?
Inspiration can be found with something as simple as procrastination or completing that long overdue home improvement project. Write a limerick on the lengths you go to NOT complete an easy task or how about a fiction story about the anxiety of lists and how the protagonist overcame it? How about an essay on that deck project that left you covered in stain with sore muscles and an aching back? Or how about a fun nonfiction story about overcoming the weeds in your garden with sheer stubbornness and physical strength?
Calls, Contests, & More
Below are this week’s writing contests, calls for submissions, and literary and writing events. Enjoy 31 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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