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NewPages Newsletter #189: Manic Monday Inspiration & Submission Deadlines
Happy Monday!
It’s here—the middle of July! That means two things:
Our monthly eLitPak Newsletter lands in your inbox this Wednesday, and
A lot of submission deadlines are coming up tomorrow.
We hope your Monday has been smoother than ours here at NewPages. But if it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, take a breath, grab a lavender lemonade, and dive into some great literature and submission opportunities. A little inspiration goes a long way.
📩 If this email gets cut off, click ‘View Entire Message’ at the bottom or head to Substack to read the full newsletter!
🌟Sponsored Reads
Feller: Poems by Denton Loving
In his third collection, Loving explores longing, connection, and the sacred in nature. Rooted in Appalachian soil yet universally resonant, these poems reveal the hidden self through moonlight, moth wings, and human struggle. A lyrical, transformative journey into the wild and the soul.
Borderlines by Alan Botsford
An American poet abroad explores identity, imagination, and cultural intersections in this cosmic, Whitman-infused journey. With voices that echo across borders and inner landscapes, Botsford’s poems offer a lyrical meditation on self, place, and love—where ego meets alter ego in a bar beyond time.
📚 In Magazine News
It’s always sad when journals bid farewell. We don’t often cover such news, but we’re sharing these official closures below:
Under the Madness Magazine Bids Farewell
After eight vibrant issues showcasing the voices of over 175 teen writers from around the world, Under the Madness Magazine is closing its doors. Editor-in-Chief Alexandria Peary shared the news on the journal’s website, expressing gratitude for the creativity and community that blossomed through the publication. The journal, launched during the pandemic, leaves behind a meaningful legacy of youth literary expression.
The Unmooring Journal Concludes Its Journey
In a heartfelt letter published earlier this year, the editors of The Unmooring announced the journal’s closure in 2025. Since its founding, the publication has served as a platform for women’s voices in Christian faith, art, and writing. The editorial team expressed gratitude for the global community that supported their mission and contributed to its vibrant issues.
In more inspiring news, new issues from a wide range of literary journals are out now—ready to spark your imagination and fill your reading list.
Swing by the Magazine Stand to discover what’s fresh and fabulous in the lit mag world.
Blink-Ink Issue #60: “Seeds”
This issue explores “Seeds” as beginnings—tiny things planted with hope, promise, or quiet potential. Whether dormant or bursting forth, these 50-word stories capture the essence of growth, dreams, and transformation. Featuring work by Maddie W. White, Kathy Lynn Carroll, Anne Anthony, Richard Zboray, Vali Hawkins Mitchell, Sushmita Sridhar, and many more.
Cool Beans Lit – Summer 2025 Issue
The latest issue features 25 diverse voices in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art—each capturing the sharp edges and unpredictable rhythms of our current moment. From life-altering hearing loss to the comedy of influencer culture, from immigrant journeys to personal reinvention, this issue is rich with insight, heart, and humanity. Take a break and dip a toe into this refreshing summer read.
Come back to the Magazine Stand later this week to discover the Summer/Fall 2025 issue of Kaleidoscope.
🔍 In Review
Not feeling like reading the books currently on your to-read list or perhaps you have finally caught up on everything? Our reviewers are here to help your indecision and reading conundrums with their thoughtful feedback.
Walking the Burn by Rachel Kellum – Reviewed by Jami Macarty
In this searing collection, Kellum explores fire as both destruction and transformation—through nature, personal trauma, and social reckoning. With themes of grief, healing, and justice, her poems traverse familial wounds, interracial love, and the names of the murdered. Walking the Burn is a courageous, lyrical journey through devastation toward clarity and care.
Songs for the Land-Bound by Violeta Garcia-Mendoza – Reviewed by Jami Macarty
In this luminous debut, Garcia-Mendoza explores motherhood, marriage, aging, and art through layered poetic forms and lyrical dualities. With birds as guides and language as compass, her poems navigate the “dread and marvel” of life, crafting music from memory, wilderness, and the “wreckage strung with violets.” A resonant, artful collection.
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Reviewed by Kevin Brown
Adichie’s first novel since Americanah explores the lives of four women navigating love, race, and societal pressure. With themes of motherhood, trauma, and cultural expectation, Dream Count blends personal and political, drawing from real events to examine how women’s stories are told—and believed. A powerful, layered return from a master storyteller.
Coming this week, reviews of The Mistaken Place of Things by Gabriela Aguirre, The Names by Florence Knapp, and The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani.
🏬 Bookstore Updates
You cannot keep a good book down, can you? Nor a good bookstore! Whether you're traveling or staying local, these indie bookstores are worth a visit:
📍 The Archives – Petoskey, Michigan
This new bookstore from McLean & Eakin Booksellers is completely devoted to used books in all genres.
📍 Build Coffee & Books – Chicago, Illinois
A community hub, coffee shop, and bookstore in the Woodlawn community.
📍 Hidden Barn Books – Bar Harbor, Maine
A cozy, community-centered bookstore tucked behind Reel Pizza, offering curated reads and local literary events.
📍 Kindred Stories – Houston, Texas
This store committed to amplifying the voices of Black authors and artisans has recently moved locations!
📍 Mermaid Books – Milford, Connecticut
A women-owned bookstore with a little bit of something for fishies of all ages.
📍 Quade Books – Aventura, Florida
Located in the Aventura Mall, Quade Books is a bilingual bookstore offering carefully curated books in English and Spanish.
📍 Well Red Damsel – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
A woman- and queer-owned bookstore dedicated to all things romance.
Stop by our Guide to Indie Bookstores to find these and more great stores in your area. Know a store we should include? Let us know!
✍️Inspiration Prompt: A Series of Unfortunate Events
It all started with a birthday. Not yours, exactly—but the one your doctor’s office thinks you have. A small clerical error, harmless at first glance, until it becomes the reason you’re denied lab work. Twice. So you drive back and forth between clinics and offices, trying to prove you were, in fact, born when you say you were.
Then, just when you think you’ve got it sorted, you find yourself stuck in traffic for 30 minutes behind a fender-bender that somehow managed to block every possible detour. You sit there, unmoving, watching the clock tick past your appointment time, wondering if this is all part of some elaborate cosmic joke.
Some days really do feel like a chapter out of A Series of Unfortunate Events—a comedy of errors with no punchline in sight.
Nonfiction: Tell us about a real-life day that spiraled into absurdity. What went wrong? What did you learn? Where did you find humor or clarity?
Fiction: Invent a character whose day goes completely off the rails. What chain of events unravels their plans? Is it tragic, comic, or both?
Poetry: Capture the chaos in verse. Use rhythm, repetition, or surreal imagery to reflect the feeling of being stuck in life’s traffic jam.
Visual Artists: Illustrate a moment of beautiful frustration—a spilled coffee, a tangled phone cord, a traffic jam that becomes a metaphor.
Hybrid/Experimental: Collage, blackout poetry, comics, or multimedia—how can you show a series of unfortunate events without telling?
Looking for more inspiration? Stop by our Weekly Roundup of Submission Opportunities for more prompts.
Calls, Contests, & More
Below is a small preview of this week’s 49 writing contests, calls for submissions, and literary and writing events.
EXTENDED DEADLINE JULY 15: New American Fiction Prize
Extended Deadline: July 15, 2025
2025 New American Fiction Prize Extended Deadline: July 15, 2025. Winner receives $1500, publication, 25 copies, and promotional support. Send full-length fiction manuscripts of 100+ pages in any form—novels, novellas, story collections, flash fiction, and hybrids. Submit via our online submission manager. Omit identifying details from the manuscript file; editors read blind. Entry fee: $25. Simultaneous submissions encouraged—please notify us if accepted elsewhere. Final judge: Clancy Martin, author of How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind. More at our website.
Gutsy Great Novelist Page One Prize
Deadline: July 16, 2025 5PM ET
The Gutsy Great Novelist Page One Prize is awarded for an outstanding opening page of an unpublished novel. First prize is $1,000; 2nd is $500; and 3rd is $250. The prize is open internationally to anyone over 18 writing a novel in English in any genre for adult or YA readers (fiction only). Winners will be announced August 22, 2025. Learn more here.
Submissions Open for Housatonic Book Awards
Deadline: July 18, 2025
The Housatonic Book Awards are now accepting submissions of all books published in 2024. Authors or agents are welcome to submit poetry, fiction, and nonfiction manuscripts for consideration in the HBAs. All manuscripts will be reviewed by a committee and the winners will be notified in October 2025. Each award carries a $1,000 honorarium and $500 travel stipend in exchange for the author appearing at either WCSU's fall or summer writing residency. Entering a title implies the author’s willingness to attend the WCSU MFA residency to host a 2-hour workshop. We look forward to considering your work! Learn more here.
2026 Press 53 Award for Poetry
Deadline: July 31, 2025
Publication, $1,000 advance, and 53 copies will be awarded to an outstanding, unpublished poetry manuscript. If Runner-Up is also selected, publication, $500 advance, and 25 copies. Press 53 Poetry Series Editor Tom Lombardo is the only reader and judge. Prizes awarded upon publication. Deadline July 31. Winner and finalists announced by November 1. Reading fee $30. Complete information at our website.
RED WHEELBARROW POETRY PRIZE 2025: $1,000 and letterpress broadside
Deadline: July 31, 2025
RED WHEELBARROW POETRY PRIZE 2025: $1,000 for first place and a letterpress broadside, $500 for second, $250 for third. Top five published in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine. Final judge is Stephen Kuusisto. Submit up to 3 original unpublished poems. $15 entry fee. Deadline: July 31. For complete guidelines, see our submissisons manager.
The Coniston Prize
Deadline: August 1, 2025
Radar Poetry is now open to submissions for the 12th annual Coniston Prize, judged by Diane Seuss! The Coniston Prize recognizes an exceptional group of poems by a woman writing in English. Any poet who identifies as a woman is eligible. The winner will receive $1,000, and up to 10 finalists will be awarded $175. The winner and finalists’ poems will also be published in the prize issue. Submit 3-5 poems via Submittable with no identifying information. Entry fee $20. Deadline: August 1. Submit now.
Inverted Syntax's Poetry Book Contests
Deadline: August 15, 2025
Inverted Syntax [est. 2018] is a press where the margins take center stage. We're now accepting submissions to our annual poetry book contests: the Sublingua Prize for Poetry (1st Book Award) for exceptional debut collections by female-identifying writers, and the Aggrey & Tabbikha Prize for Poetry for writers with first or second collections who identify as Black and/or part of the S.W.A.N.A diaspora. We welcome intersectional, hybrid, experimental, and speculative poetry—including visual work and multilingual text, as long as the manuscript is primarily in English. Winning entries receive $500, publication and more. We're also open to submissions in all genres for Fissured Tongue Series Vol. VII. Learn more here.
The Headlight Review presents the Anthony Grooms Prize in Fiction
Deadline: August 31, 2025
First prize of $750 is awarded to the winning writer, along with 20 copies of the winning chapbook, published by The Headlight Review Press. The chapbook will be perfect-bound and feature a four-color cover. Submissions will run through August 31. Manuscripts are not to exceed 12,500 words. The content may include a single story, multiple stories, multiple flash stories, or a stand-alone novel excerpt. Finalists will be revealed by October 15 and will be judged by the esteemed author James Cherry. Visit site to learn more.
The Branches Fall 2025 Call for Submissions - VOICE
Deadline: September 13, 2025
The Branches is seeking submissions of previously unpublished written and visual work for our fall 2025 theme VOICE. We are especially interested in cultural criticism, personal essays, and book/movie discussions and also publish poetry, short fiction, art, and photography on the theme of VOICE. We recommend reading some of our previous issues (click issues on our website) to get a feel for what we publish. Give us your big ideas and small thoughts, the ways you’re interacting with and understanding the world. We love Joan Didion, C. S. Lewis, Ada Limón, Susan Sontag, Flannery O’Connor, Patti Smith, and (hopefully) you! Off-theme submissions welcome. Visit website.
Fiction on the Web Critique Service
Looking for detailed, personalized feedback on your short story? Fiction on the Web now offers a critique service led by our editorial team. Whether you're revising or preparing to submit, we’re here to help strong ideas become stronger on the page. Each critique includes strengths and areas for improvement, sentence-level notes, and a scorecard evaluating major craft elements. Our editors are experienced in the litmag scene and know what makes a story stand out. Learn more or request a critique at our website.
Plant-Human Quarterly Seeks Poems and Essays for Upcoming Issues
Deadline: Year-round
Plant-Human Quarterly reads year-round. We seek unpublished or published poetry and essays that explore the myriad ways writers manifest their relationship to the botanical world—whether through heavily researched pieces, keen observation, or more intuitive ways of knowing—that attempt to communicate across boundaries and approach a plant’s-eye-view of the world. Send no more than 5 poems or an essay of no more than 1500 words (flash essay or essay excerpt) in a single word document. Past contributors include Ellen Bass, Forrest Gander, Kimiko Hahn, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Pattiann Rogers, Scott Russell Sanders, Arthur Sze. View submission guidelines at our website.
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☕ Until Next Time…
Here’s hoping your Tuesday is a little less chaotic than your Monday. Wishing you a safe, calm week ahead—remember to stay hydrated and keep cool however you can!
— The NewPages Team
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