Second Issue of ‘Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color’ Now Available

Nearly one month ago, Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color published its second issue. Produced in collaboration with the Lambda Literary Foundation, Nepantla’s second issue features work from twenty-three poets, as well as interviews with CeCe McDonald (interviewed by Alok Vaid-Menon) and Carl Phillips (interviewed by Rickey Laurentiis). You can download the second issue and learn more about the journal here!

Kenyon Review Call for Submissions

Illustration from a 16th century manuscript, courtesy of the Public Domain Review

The Kenyon Review is looking for poetry, fiction, essays, and drama involving science, ecology, and the environment for a special issue to be published in Sept/Oct 2016. Surrounding this special issue, the Kenyon Review will host an online discussion of writers, editors, and scientists on the question of what makes science writing literary. Find out more on submitting your work here!

Nicolas Amara Publishes New Work on Almost5Q

Photo by Nicolas Amara

Almost5Q is the finalist blog of Five Quarterly, an online literary journal that publishes five pieces of fiction and poetry each month, with each issue edited by a new editorial board composed of five guest editors. The finalist blog showcases those pieces which reached the final editorial reading. Our assistant editor, Nicolas Amara, was recently featured there. Check out his poem, “River,” over at Almost5Q!

Frances Justine Post Interviewed in Print-Oriented Bastards

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

We are excited to acknowledge that Pennsylvania-based journal Print-Oriented Bastards has recently interviewed Frances Justine Post (BEAST, Augury Books, 2014). The interview, conducted by Ines Pujos, POB’s senior editor, covers questions of process, environmental influence, and the overall aesthetics of BEAST.

Post: ‘Self-Portrait as Beast’ was the first self-portrait poem I’d ever written. Though it was new to me, there is a long tradition of self-portrait poems (Lucie Brock-Broido and John Ashbery come to mind). I found myself most drawn to writing ‘Self Portrait as…’ poems. Rather than writing straight-up self-portrait poems about my actual self, I started treating them as almost-persona poems. In these poems, I’m not really trying to speak in the voice of someone else. I am still the speaker; I just try on different skins for a little while.”

The whole of the interview, as well as the rest of issue 4, can be read online!

VIDEO and AUDIO: New Work from Maureen Alsop in ‘Menacing Hedge,’ ‘Your Impossible Voice,’ and More

Image courtesy of Fred J, Wikimedia Commons

Maureen Alsop (Mantic, Augury Books, 2013) has emerged with new pieces in her short video series for literary journal Your Impossible Voice. “Portentum” and “Esopus” now join “Sweepspear” and “Terrestris” to complete the YIV series.

Watch the videos for “Portentum” and “Esopus” here; find out more about YIV here.

Also, listen to Alsop read four new poems in this summer’s edition of Menacing Hedge, and check out her new work in First Literary Review-East.

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Maureen Alsop’s MANTIC Reviewed in ‘Prick of the Spindle’; New Material in Superstition Review

Photo by Nicolas Amara

The latest issue of the Alabama-based quarterly Prick of the Spindle features a review of Maureen Alsop’s Mantic (Augury Books, 2013) by poet Christopher R. Vaughan, who speaks of the themes in Mantic and how they function:

‘Mantic’ means ‘of or relating to the faculty of divination: prophetic,’ according to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. Alsop’s collection is indeed largely a tour of mantic poems whose helpful subtitles state the exact type of divination being attempted . . . . Mantic is a fascinating and consistently inventive exploration into the depths of experience. There is an ocean of feeling here, and the collection is at its most successful when the author brings a clear shape to the painful and dark currents running through the book.”

Read the full review here.

While you’re at it, check out this collection of wonderful new guest posts, podcasts, and poems by Alsop on this spring’s Superstition Review.

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Halina Duraj's "The Family Cannon" Reviewed in Quarterly West

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“Time in The Family Cannon,” by Shena McAuliffe, from Quarterly West issue 82

Quarterly West is a literary journal put together by the PhD writing program at the University of Utah. The most recent issue houses a review of Halina Duraj’s The Family Cannon (Augury, 2014) by Shena McAuliffe, who has detailed time and possession of memory in Duraj’s book graphically (chronology pictured above). McAuliffe relishes the emotional weight that Duraj’s stories hold:

“At the end of each story, I had to take a break before moving on to the next—a break from the disappointed desires, the steadfast self-sacrificing mother, the madness and the ghosts, the struggle to remember, to say things just as they should be said. In the end, what is most striking about Duraj’s book is how it moved me; it exhausted me in the way that a good story should.”

Alongside McAuliffe’s review in the summer issue is a creative nonfiction piece by Augury editor Kate Angus. Read both and learn more about the journal at the Quarterly West website.

 

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