News from NewPages
The sun is shining and weather in Michigan finally wants to be more like spring…or maybe summer. If your neck of the woods is enjoying sunshine and warmer temps, time to get outside and read a book or magazine or maybe drag out your laptop and photosynthesize while writing and editing your work.
Love to write short, experimental, and dark work? Read the first issue of Dark Onus Lit and consider submitting to them. They are open year-round and don’t charge a fee. Nicer weather means it’s also great to get outside while attending online writing classes, like the offerings from Caesura Poetry Workshop. NewPages readers can use code WEBSITE to get 20% off their first class.
Don’t forget that May 22 is the last day to submit fiction, poetry, and essays to the New Letters Literary Awards. Entry fee includes a 1-year subscription. And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to add reminders to your June and July submissions calendars for the 2023 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize (July 31), the Swan Scythe Press 2023 Poetry Chapbook Contest (June 15), and the 28th annual Poet Hunt from The MacGuffin (June 15).
If you have a paid newsletter subscription, you can learn more about these and even more opportunities below. If you have a free subscription, you can use the button below to upgrade to unlock them.
Looking for some great literary magazines to curl up with? The Spring 2023 issue of Months to Years is now available and features work by twenty-two creators exploring mortality and terminal illness, including Blair Hurley, Erica Driggers, and Craig Jackson Schuler. If you love discovering fresh literary magazines, you’ll love Denise Hill’s New Lit on the Block Series. Recently featured, learn more about Hot Pot Magazine. This new open-access online monthly features prose, poetry, visual art, comics, audio, spoken word, and music files. Founder and Editor-in-Chief Emily Pedroza says she started Hot Pot Magazine because “I just wanted to create a hub for literature and art that makes people feel less alone. To amplify the stories and voices that lie within literature and art.” Discover more here.
You can find even more new issues of great literary journals by checking out the NewPages Magazine Stand.
Discover your next read from indie and university presses at the NewPages Book Stand which is updated frequently during the week. Now available from Sagging Meniscus Press, enjoy Joe Taylor’s Highway 28 West which follows Preacher, who is not a preacher, as he finds a Pitbull puppy on the side of the road and gets a job at a boxing manufacturer all leading him to believe his luck has changed. In Kelly Rowe’s Rise above the River, we find a sister powerless to redress her brother’s fall from grace after the trauma of his childhood sexual abuse by a female authority figure.
The Loved Ones: Essays to Bury the Dead by Madison Davis is due out from Dzanc Books next month. In The Loved Ones, Davis explores the deaths of four family members across three generations: a double murder, fatal car accident, long illness, and a conscripted soldier killed in action. Also coming in June is Stephen P. Friot’s Containing History: How Cold War History Explains US-Russia Relations. The book employs the tools and insights of history, political science, and international relations to explain how twenty-first-century public attitudes in Russia are the product of a thousand years of history.
Due out from Red Hen Press next month, discover John Barr’s collection of poems, The Boxer of Quirnial. The collection explores the struggle of all animals to survive while giving proof of life and the eternal presence of war. A Pros and Cons List for Strong Feelings: A Graphic Memoir by Will Betke-Brunswick follows the ten months remaining with their beloved mother who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
The poems in Matthew E. Henry’s collection The Third Renunciation, due out from NYQ Books in June, reject classic depictions of divinity and religious dogma to see God more fully. Girl Country: Stories by Jacqueline Vogtman is Winner of the Dzanc Shorty Story Collection Prize with stories that feature a near-future farmer battling environmental crises who takes in a mysterious girl he finds on the roadside.
Speaking of contest winners, Joshua Shaw’s collection of short stories, All We Could Have Been and More is the winner of the Tartt First Fiction Award from Livingston Press. You can get your copy featuring stories above zombie ant fungus and self-conscious test dummies in July. Tom Piazza’s novel The Auburn Conference is set at a tiny college in upstate New York where an idealistic young professor has managed to convince literary greats Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Confederate memoirist Forrest Taylor, and romance novelist Lucy Comstock to participate in the first and last Auburn Writers’ Conference.
Emily Franklin’s novel The Lioness of Boston follows Isabella Stewart Gardner has she strives to fit in with the stuffy bluebloods after arriving in Boston as a newlywed bride. When tragedies strike along with rejection by upper-society, Isabella discovers her spirit and casts off expectations. Sprawl by Andrew Collard is a collection of poems and reconstruction of the constantly shifting landscape of metropolitan Detroit.
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 even more reading recommendations from our reviewers. Kevin Brown dives into Des Linden’s Choosing to Run which “is much more focused on her career in running, not significant issues surrounding the sport (gender, doping, and race, respectively) in the context of the authors’ lives and careers” unlike recent memoirs by female runners.
Meanwhile Joy Stocke covers Lynn Levin’s House Parties which features “twenty beautifully crafted short stories” where “the mundane actions of daily life are upended and enter the realm of myth.”
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 18 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
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