It is May. That awkward month transitioning from spring to summer that still can’t make up its mind if it wishes to be nice and warm or cold and dreary. While May has started rainy and cool, we did manage to finally get our vegetable garden worked up and the early seeds in. Of course, like so often anymore, our temperatures are set to spike up with storms promised and then yet another bout of cool weather descending afterwards.
If the continuous weather whiplash has you feeling a bit weary, how about a little pick-me-up with some exceptional cover art? This week NewPages Editor Denise Hill selected three new covers to enjoy in her Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week column. First we have Raleigh Review’s Spring 2024 issue cover featuring “Fragments” by Christen Noel Kauffman. Next up is NELLE’s 2024 issue cover featuring Chiharu Roach’s “Code 22VD-Premonitions of Sorrow.” Last, but certainly not least and very fitting given our recent solar eclipse, we have Elm Leaves Journal Spring 2024 edition. Once you are done admiring the gorgeous art on the covers, don’t forget to dive into all the great work featured between the them.
Speaking of literary magazines, don’t forget to check out our Magazine Stand to learn about fledgling journals as well as the latest issues from some of your favorites. As April has officially ended, you can catch up on all the new issues received during the month. May has only just begun, but new issues are exploding like the dandelions in my yard, which I am okay with. They are great for our pollinator population.
The Awakenings Review Spring 2024 issue features works by Linda M. Crate, Deborah Buehler, Bibhu Padhi, Sally Quon, Colleen Cavanaugh, Maria Connour, & many more! Sky Island Journal Spring 2024 features work by Abdullah Jimoh O., Alexander Etheridge, Arya Ramesh, Ciaran Pierce, and more! Enjoy work, in English, from writers living in Africa, the US, India, and more.
Coming a little later this week, discover the Spring 2024 issue of The Main Street Rag which features an interview with Richard Allen Taylor by Jessica Hylton titled, “Letters to Karen Carpenter,” the same name given to a collection Taylor says “combines poems about the very public tragedy of Karen Carpenter’s life, death, and career with poems about my very private tragedy in losing my wife Julie to an acute form of Leukemia.”
The Greensboro Review’s 115th issue is dedicated to Fred Chappell (1936 – 2024), UNC Greensboro Professor Emeritus and former North Carolina Poet Laureate, with a special tribute essay from novelist Angela Davis-Gardner. Plus, enjoy the annual Robert Watson Literary Prize selections and more. Wordrunner eChapbooks has released its 14th anthology and 51st issue. The theme is DISPLACEMENT and the writers explore who gets displaced and what gets displaced with work by William Cass, Colleen Wells, Kathleen Bryson, and Chris Bullard to name just a few contributors.
The Spring 2024 issue of Superpresent is themed “survival” which has been a central theme in literature and life since the beginning of time, although the ways in which survival is marked may have changed. Enjoy paintings by Sharon Kopriva, and work by Crawdad Nelson, Charter Weeks, Mouse Mikala, and others. Issue 16 of Arkana: A Literary Journal of Mysteries and Marginalized Voices features an interview with poet Brody Parrish Craig with work by Angelina Leanos, Huina Zheng, Cathy Adams, and Theo Wolf. In the May 2024 issue of The Lake, dive into poems from Melanie Branton, Bruce McRae, and Sharon Whitehill along with reviews of published poetry collections.
In book news, see a list of all new and forthcoming title announcements NewPages received during the month of April here. Get more book recommendations from our reviewers. Jami Macarty reviewed Thine by Kate Partridge for the blog last week. “In Thine, Kate Partridge’s meditative lyrics generously allow poetic perspectives physical and cognitive, situated in landscape and observation, located in ‘the city, the body’ and ‘the peopled land the landed people.’”
Macarty also gave her thoughts on Susana H. Case’s If This Isn’t Love. The collection is organized around “[u]nrequited love, rapes, / tumors, mental hospitals, and secret / adoptions,” among other open narratives in “romance comics,” “telenovelas,” and her own real-life, “sad increments” having to do with “broken family,” “abusive men,” “my abortion,” and “female cancers.”
Kevin Brown enjoys discovering more of Caster Semenya’s story in The Race to Be Myself: A Memoir. “This memoir is Semenya’s taking control of her own narrative, as she tells the story of how she fell in love with running, the acceptance she felt in her family and village, the success she had on the track, and her fight against World Athletics.”
Posting later this week, enjoy reviews of Peter W. Cookson, Jr.’s School Communities of Strength, Amy Berkowitz’s Poèmes deep/Gravitas, Salman Rushdie’s Knife, and Anastasia Zadeik’s The Other Side of Nothing.
With spring here and summer on its way next month, isn’t it a great time to dive into the natural world for inspiration? What thoughts do you think a dandelion has? To some an edible plant with medicinal properties even, to others an invasive weed that destroys their perfectly manicured lawn.
Do you enjoy spring or are you besieged by the ever-annoying presence of allergies? What humor or inspiration can you find there? What is your favorite part about the season? Has the sunlight falling through a fresh new canopy of green leaves tickled the creative fancy? Has planting and tending a garden given you a new perspective on the cycle of things? What horror stories, mishaps, or lack of a green thumb can you tell?
Grab your favorite notebook and pen and head outdoors on a pleasant spring morning for a peaceful day of observing and writing…see where spring can take you.
Calls, Contests, & More
Below are this week’s writing contests, calls for submissions, and literary and writing events. Enjoy 37 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.