New Submission Opportunities & Great Literature
NewPages Newsletter Issue 87 Featuring 33 Calls for Submissions and Writing Contests
News from NewPages
Happy last day of July! There are a lot of deadlines coming today like Driftwood Press’ Adrift Contests, Press 53’s 2024 Award for Poetry, and the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize. August 1 deadlines include About Place Journal’s The-More-than-Human World issue and Monosyllabic Queer Theory poetry anthology. Paying subscribers can access all of these opportunities and more at the bottom of this newsletter.
If you are applying to graduate writing programs, don’t forget that the low-res Spalding MFA program’s early decision deadline is August 1. They are now able to award a limited number of incoming students $2,500 scholarships thanks to a generous grant from the Renau Foundation. Learn more here.
NewPages is on social media. Besides our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, we are now findable on Instagram’s Threads. Give us a follow if you aren’t already.
Stop by the Magazine Stand this week to discover Editor Denise Hill’s latest Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week. Selected covers include Black Warrior Review’s Spring/Summer 2023 issue featuring Aris Moore’s work, Fourteen Hills Issue 29 featuring Jewel Rodriguez’s work, and Room Issue 46.2 featuring cover art by semillites hernández velasco. And don’t forget to admire the writing and art featured inside these journals, too.
The Spring/Summer 2023 issue of South 85 is now available. This online journal is from the Converse College Low-Res MFA program. Enjoy work by Matt Izzi, Linda Briskin, and Dana Tenille Weekes to name a few of the contributors. Online journal Split Rock Review’s Spring 2023 issue features work by Joy Arbor, Barbara Westwood Diehl, Nathan Manley, Gary Thomas, Nathan Holic, Rebecca Lee Clay, Hary Bauld, and more.
Under the Gum Tree, a digital and print journal dedicated to creative nonfiction and visual art, opens the Summer 2023 issue with a Letter from the Editor titled “Unimaginable Resiliency” in which Janna Marlies Maron writers about her major relapse of MS in August 2022 and adds that “If there is one thing I know for sure it’s that our stories always demonstrate an unimaginable resiliency.” Contributors include Kristina Ryan Tate, Ali Saperstein, Kathryn Leehane, Suzanne Lewis, Tawnya Gibson, Alex Noelke, Ryan Taylor, and Seth Pitt.
The Awakenings Review Spring 2023 issue continues its tradition of featuring works by writers and artists with mental illness as well as from family members and friends of people with mental illness. Contributors in this issue include W. Barrett Munn, Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes, Hugh Anderson, Christine Anderson, Jan Marston, and more. Vita Poetica Journal is devoted to creative work exploring through a spiritual lens. Contributors to the Summer 2023 issue include Paul Hostovsky, Rachelle Scott, Joseph Byrd, Emily Ver Steeg, Lucy Bell, and more.
Last, but not least in the slightest, the Summer 2023 issue of online journal Apple in the Dark features the winning entries from their inaugural Flash Fiction Contest judged by Chelsea T. Hicks: Winner Ashley Beresch and Honorable Mentions Brenda Yates and Xochi Cartland, as well as works by finalists Cemile Guldal, Liz DeGregorio, MaxieJane Frazier, Brandi Ocasio, Robert Warf, and Juliana Warta.
Learn more about fledgling publications with our New Lit on the Block feature. There you can discover more about The Howl whose name pays homage to Allen Ginsberg. This new publication is edited by a team of undergraduate students under the direction of the Department of Creative and Professional Writing faculty at Western Connecticut State University. Come back to the Magazine Stand throughout the week to discover fledgling journal Twin Bird Review.
Discover new releases and forthcoming titles from indie and university presses at the NewPages Book Stand, like the winner of the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award, Boomtown Girl by Shubha Sunder is set entirely in the Bangalore region of South India and explores the ambitions, delusions, and struggles of people navigating a rapidly developing city. The Legible Element by Ralph Sneeden is a lyrical memoir of a life lived in and out of the water and is Sneeden’s first book of essays.
Coming in September from Street Noise Books, add Joseph Kai’s graphic novel Restless to your reading list. The book is set in Beirut, Lebanon, 30 years after the end of the civil war, and a few months before the disastrous explosion of August 2020. Also releasing in September, is Saadia Faruqi’s Saving Sunshine, illustrated by Shazleen Khan. The book follows twins Zara and Zeeshan whose constant squabbles have their parents sentencing them with time together on their family trip to Florida.
Dreaming in Cantera / Sueños en Cantera: Poems by Bonnie Wolkenstein is the result of travel plans gone awry due to the pandemic. Instead of experiencing several countries, Wolkenstein was able to deepen her knowledge and exploration within the limits of one place, one person, and the overlap between them. Optometry by Xiang Yata is a 250-page, full-color graphic novel that follows the story of a woman who is transported to an experimental kaleidoscopic world during a visit to the optometrist.
Come back to the Book Stand throughout the week to discover even more titles from Joan E. Bauer, Esra Mirze Santesso, Chris Rugeley, Charles Goodrich, Kathy Nelson, and John Philip Drury.
NewPages Blog
Stay caught up at our blog. There you can take in short reviews, contest & book award winners, book & literary magazine news, new issues of literary magazines, new and forthcoming titles, and cultural & political news.
Get more recommendations from our reviewers. Kevin Brown tackles Michael Moss’ Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit or Addictions who may cause skepticism with his claims that major manufacturers of processed foods design products to addict consumers, but this book just might convince them otherwise. Meanwhile Jami Macarty takes on Michael Kleber-Diggs’ Wordly Things which offers readers the opportunity to tune to his point of view as a middle-class Black American.
NewPages Editor Denise Hill reviews the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of literary magazine Ecotone which includes four graphic literature pieces that drew her into the publication. Denise also reviews Saving Sunshine by Saadia Faruqi and illustrated by Shazleen Khan which offers a treasure trove of topics for discussion with an overarching message of the difficult but important act of standing up and standing firm – both for oneself as well as for others.
If you’re interested in seeing your own review featured on our blog, please check out our revised guidelines and consider submitting to NewPages today. It’s free.
Below are this week’s writing contests, calls for submissions, and literary and writing events. Enjoy 34 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.
Calls, Contests, & More
Here are the latest and featured calls for submissions and writing and book contests.
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