Happy Monday. With August around the corner, it means time is running out to cram everything you want to do in before the start of a new semester or a new school year for the kiddos. If any of these plans include writing and reading, NewPages has you covered with plenty of great literature and submission opportunities to keep you busy.
Our monthly eLitPak newsletter was emailed to our current subscribers last week. If you missed it somehow, you can view it here. Enjoy learning about the latest issue of Kaleidscope which is also open to work year-round, discovering new titles by members of the Colorado Authors League and new releases from Unsolicited press. On Spec is also offering the chance to win a subscription when you purchase their latest issue. In submission news, there’s still a bit of time left to enter Sport Literate’s “1970s contest,” The Greensboro Review’s Robert Watson Literary Prizes, and Inverted Syntax’s Poetry Book Contests. Plus, enjoy calls for submissions from About Place Journal and The Bluebird Word.
In Magazine news, you can head to our Magazine Stand to discover new issues of new and well-established literary journals. Each issue of THEMA centers on a premise with the Summer 2024 prompt being “The magic of light and shadow.” The theme can be integral to plot, not necessarily central but also not merely incidental. Still Points Arts Quarterly Summer 2024 is themed “The House of My Dreams” and features contemporary works of art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Kaleidoscope magazine publishes work that creatively explores the experience of disability through literature and the fine arts. The Summer/Fall 2024 issue (#89) explores the ebbs and flows of life. Just like shells along a beach, readers will find some treasures in the selected works.
Online literary magazine Fleeting Daze becomes the latest literary journal to be featured in Denise Hill’s New Lit on the Block series. Most of us are likely at an age when we can recall how quickly carefree younger days seem to have slipped through our fingers as we entered irrevocably into adulthood. Fortunately, for today’s youth, there is Fleeting Daze Magazine, a youth-run literary online quarterly publishing all forms of literary arts and writing from contributors ages 13-24. New issues are available every 2-3 months in open access online forms.
Come back to the NewPages Magazine Stand during the week to discover the Spring 2024 issue of Blue Collar Review, the Summer 2024 issue of Colorado Review, and Issue 4 of Red Tree Review. You can also learn more about the new journal Libre.
Looking for your next read? The NewPages Book Stand features new and forthcoming titles from indie and university presses. Recently featured, discover White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy by Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. This groundbreaking work exposes a legacy of historical myths that continue to define both white and Black people, creating in the process what might seem like an insuperable divide.
Need some book recommendations? Check out our latest reviews! Jami Macarty voices her thoughts on Wonder About The by Matthew Cooperman. This poetry collection presents “a spilling presence” of Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River and educates readers about the threats to the waterway’s fragile ecology.
Enjoy three reviews by Kevin Brown. First he covers Headshot, the debut novel of Rita Bullwinkel. The books revolves around eight girls engaging in a boxing tournament. The chapters begin to follow the lives and psychology of the girls who are fighting each other. “Boxing serves as a metaphor for the lineage of women understanding one another in this world, as they move in concert with one another, responding to one another, partners in a dance that will carry them through their lives.”
Next Brown reviews V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Women’s-Prize-winning novel, Brotherless Night, which portrays the horrors of the Sri Lankan civil war of the 1980s. The main character Sashi is a teenager as the book opens and the story follows her over the next decade or so as the civil war affects every aspect of her life. “Ganeshananthan draws heavily on research, even basing one of Sashi’s professors on a real professor and activist, but it is the humanizing portrayal of the wide range of characters that gives this novel its power.”
Lastly, Brown reviews Neel Mukherjee’s novel Choice which tells a triptych of tales tangentially related to one another. “Ultimately, Mukherjee’s novel asks the question of how one should live in the twenty-first century, especially around how one can do good in such a complex world. Mukherjee leaves the reader with that question, as he knows there are no easy answers.”
One thing to say about summer…the heat can make one very drowsy, can’t it? Some days wouldn’t it be nice to take a break, find a nice spot with sunshine and curl up like a cat? Forget your phone, your tablet, your smart watch. Just stretch out in a bit of golden warmth.
Bring a sketchpad, grab a notebook, or start a post-it note story. How does it feel? Do you have a sensation of being safe and warm and lay belly up with appendages splayed out? Or do you feel insecure, curling tightly into a protective ball even while sleeping? Do cat naps make you feel good? Or bad? Do you go to sleep for only a little while to wake up much later than you intended? Can you enjoy a nice, solid sleep or is it a light and unrestful sleep?
Or perhaps its more fun to imagine from a cat’s perspective. Why the nap? What great exploits as the feline crusader done to make them so tired? A secret plot to take over the world? Plotting the downfall of dogs? Going on a late night long walk down several blocks to spend time with the girlfriend?
Let your imagination go wild!
Calls, Contests, & More
Below are this week’s writing contests, calls for submissions, and literary and writing events. Enjoy 32 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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