(orignally published by Sage Cigarettes) jade vine’s unsent texts pile up like repressed memories–the self-proclaimed poet and gender vandalist describing absence as an overgrown plant taking root in its throat, framing desire as a horrific monster. Admitting that “i’m most afraid when no one’s touching me or thinking of touching me” (75), these one-line messages […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators When Whales Went Back to the Water by Lisa Baird Steely, tender, and sensual, Lisa Baird’s When Whales Went Back to the Water creates a reverent container for a broken world. These poems are hymns to living in wonder through loss, joy, motherhood’s sleepless nights, domestic violence, and […]
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He never really liked her, his Marytoo pure, too fuckin’ piousnot interested in frolicking in bedkamasutra-ing new positionstangling like Twisteractually a bit of a borehours spent on calloused kneesmurmuring strings of nonsenseinstead of fixing him steak and fries Glad she said god was the fatherglad she said she was a virginno #metoo gonna happen herehe […]
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Brutal Companion is Ruben Quesada’s newest, aptly titled, collection of poetry from Barrow Street Press. A true companion to the brutality of everyday existence amidst self-discovery, queerness, and loss, this collection is a dark hallway littered with small, round windows where light — and life — pour in. Brutal Companion is divided into three parts, […]
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Deadline: 3/20 Eastern Iowa Review is accepting CNF of up to 3000 words, fiction of up to 1000 words, one prose poem, and up to six visual pictures for their 19th issue. Deadline: 3/29 New Delta Review is currently accepting fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid submissions written by BIPOC authors. Simultaneous submissions allowed. Deadline: 4/8 Tahoma Literary Review is currently […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Pause the Document by Mónica de la Torre As the world shuts down, Mónica de la Torre’s poems become gregarious sites of encounter—homages to connections lost and new bonds forged. Shuttling between lyrical and experimental modes, the poems in Pause the Document challenge linear notions of time by […]
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In the June 26, 1948 edition of The New Yorker Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” expanded the envelope of speculative horror—and prompted hundreds of readers to cancel their subscriptions. Letters and postcards poured in with subscribers offering their complaints and reasons, nearly all of them with an undercurrent of outrage at the supernatural events being […]
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3/15: Ink & Ember is accepting up to five art, poetry, and short prose submissions. Submissions must include submitter’s desired name and note that it’s a submission for Ink & Ember in the email’s subject line. Include a short bio, desired name, and pronouns. Art files should either be JPG or IMG; written files in […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis A hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed explores the various experiences of a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother. Nadia Alexis crafts a moving portrayal of generational trauma, domestic violence, survival, and reclamation using stunning […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Do you have a lit journal issue, chapbook, book, or other work that’s about to be published? Email us at vagabondcityliterary@gmail.com to be added to our Books Available to Review list and/or featured on an upcoming Now Read This list.
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Multiple Deadlines in February: The Hooghly Review is accepting CNF, fiction, play, and visual art submissions for an upcoming issue. 2/10: Game Over Books is accepting previously unpublished essay, poetry, and visual art submissions from Queer religious school alums for an upcoming anthology called Uncommon: An Anthology of Art and Writing by Queer Religious School […]
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Cavar’s dystopian novel Failure to Comply, like all great science fiction novels, is a cautionary tale about the present cloaked in a story about the future. Despite its bleak setting of oppression and control by a corporation state, RSCH, Cavar’s novel might as well be taking place in Texas, Florida or Tennessee in the midst […]
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Bruce E. Whitacre’s latest book, Good Housekeeping, from Poets Wear Prada, explores the humanness of living inside the bedlam of urban existence. Life is full of elixirs when dealing with modern chaos, whether it be vodka, champagne, etc. But, at its core, people are the flesh, bones, and blood of beer. We seek shelter from life. We […]
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The Fiddlehead is currently accepting CNF, Fiction, Poetry, and Translation submissions from Canadian authors. Submit double-spaced prose of no more than 6,000 words or no more than 6 single-spaced poems/12 pages total. Deadline: 11/30 45th Parallel is currently accepting CNF submissions. Submit one single piece of work up to 3,000 words or two pieces of […]
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It’s dead. The horror movie stag stared into a dollar store’s heaven. I stood with crossed arms, a grave marker model, skin pressed Against the city’s street island tree until the sickly bark raised grooves of red ache Returning to a singed harmony. Pain is normal, this one’s new. Smoke billowed from the scattering sparks, […]
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the floor-to-ceiling windows matter more than the whitish print ofa something bird, perhaps crow-like magicking through the corpseas if it were the first thing to die; i refused to kiss that bird watcheronce because she ordered quail eggs at dinner in this economy in this restaurant where everyone can see her eating another’s youngin this bed […]
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The weekend night has a gash in its belly,deep and red, bleeding smokeinto the cool, darkening sky. Tomorrow,we’ll mourn in our own wayunder stale Monday morning sun,or in the pools of our noon shadows.At home, this grief drives us to mementos:bedsheets browned from barefoot walks,the bitter smoke smell from the clothes in the corner. Devon […]
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Write something about sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. Get more specific. Write something about sitting in a doctor’s waiting room as everyone else is escorted down the mouth of the sterile hallway by nurses in purple scrubs. Describe the smell of antiseptic. Write about remaining in the plastic chair long after the lights go out and the doctors go home. Write about coughing […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators So Much More: Abstracts, Unfinished Sequences, and Political Prose Poems by Darren C. Demaree So Much More is a collection of interstitial wants and fears. Quilted together in a way that can amplify the abstracts, the sequences, the political prose poems, this book works with an energy […]
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It’s a rare pleasure to read a debut and know you’re seeing the author at the beginning of a long, successful career. But that’s how I felt reading Heat Death of the Universe (fifth wheel press, 2023), the debut chapbook of emerging poet Leela Raj-Sankar. In Heat Death, Raj-Sankar follows up her prolific 2022—which she […]
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Her mother told her to look after their garden. She gathered the small flowers and laidthem next to each other. She carefully kissed every flower like they meant the world toher. She gave them names. The garden was her everything, but the bombs took it away.She drew flowers on red papers, thinking her family gave […]
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The old woman sat on some front steps, playing catch with herself with a bright orangeball, tossing it high with her right hand, catching it in her left, tossing it less high with her left,catching it in her right. A man, pausing to light a cigarette, looked at her and laughed. She tossedthe ball, caught […]
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I was never meant to carry these twins with me. They sprung up on me, latching onto me like apair of weights I couldn’t stop lifting. Baggy clothes and sweaters three sizes up used to concealthem, but I’m well into the stages where there’s no hiding them anymore. Now that they’reshowing, people are beginning to […]
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Tired and nauseous by the early hour we throw our bags into the trunk. Speeding past the streetlamps and whirling by the cars I shutter. I can see my breath as we wait for the shuttle. Theterminal lights burn my eyeballs. We stand in line with the others and inch through security andthen down the […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators No One Knows Their Blood Type by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (Translated by Hazem Jamjoum) No One Knows Their Blood Type is a novel of identity, belonging, and conflicting truths—of stories, secrets, songs, rumors, and lies. On the day that her father dies, Jumana makes a discovery […]
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In the Translator’s Afterword to Nguyễn Thanh Hiện’s Chronicles of a Village, QuyênNguyễn-Hoàng describes the role of the translator as “someone trying to grasp not only therhythm or tone, but the scent of the text” (131). The scent of these words lingers with me afterreading Nguyễn-Hoàng’s translation of Nguyễn’s “timely and timeless” novel (130). Chroniclesof […]
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Abby Richardson’s approach to photography focuses on documenting “the unnoticed, untouched moments.” Drawing influence from haiku poetry and the slow, steady harmony of nature, Richardson finds joy in the profound, meditative aspects of art. Tell us about yourself; How did you get your start in photography? I have always liked photography, but I got my […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators DEED by torrin a. greathouse DEED, the follow-up to torrin a. greathouse’s 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award winning debut, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, is a formally and lyrically innovative exploration of queer sex and desire, and what it can cost. Sprawling across art, eros, […]
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Twice in my life, I’ve felt the embrace of Trujillan sun warmed-sky: first, upon my return to my home country after many years away and, most recently, through Ae Hee Lee’s gorgeously bewildering debut. Asterism opens with an epigraph from Italo Calvino’s The Invisible Cities, setting the stage for an exploration of the human condition […]
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One thing a reader is struck by in this sequence of poems, divided into sections, is how well each poem stands on its own. This book is about a mother, a daughter, a family, and a mother-daughter bond, bears, like other good books, the stamp of necessity. What sets it apart is particulars, its individuality, […]
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FERAL Journal is currently accepting poetry and art submissions for its upcoming unthemed issue. Send 1-4 poems in one DOC, DOCX, or PDF or 1-10 JPG or PNG pieces as an email attachment to feralpoetryandart@gmail.com. Also provide name and pronouns in email, but a cover letter is not required. Deadline: August 31st Just Femme & […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators You Could Be That Kind of Girl: stories by Téa Franco Frida Kahlo resurrects as a social media influencer, a girl feeds all of her food to a bloom of angry ladybugs, a skunk funeral makes a young woman contemplate her life and more in Téa […]
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7/19: The Seventh Wave is currently open for previously unpublished poetry, flash fiction, flash CNF, short screenplays, hybrid, interactive works, and visual art for its On Gaming anthology. Prose submissions can be up to 3,000 words, and up to 4 poems/pieces of art per submission. In your submission, include your full name, email address, a […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Sex Goblin by Lauren Cook As if hauled up squirming from the bowels of the internet, Sex Goblin metabolizes sex writing, popular culture, and autofiction to present the real and the imagined as equally surreal possibilities. In the narrator’s childlike voice, all things become both mundane […]
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“Lived and died a fat seven inches from your closet / toe. The gray heads of rainwater blown in. I / fought my own omens, their circles” (Moore 1). And so begins Iva Moore’s debut chapbook, Women Collapse into Better, Brighter Artists, a work that deftly examines gendered identity and relationships, womanhood as an inherently […]
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This month’s artist, Lucy Liu, captures a tender and powerful moment between a mother and daughter with her piece, Holding On. Liu shares her artistic journey and gives us insight as to how she uses painting and drawing to explore her imagination and express her emotions. You’ve mentioned you started learning art at a very young age, […]
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We have a new opening for one volunteer position: CNF Editor. See below for application details. Please note: all staff positions are volunteer and are thus unpaid. All positions are also virtual/remote. CNF Editor (Posted June 17, applications will be accepted until position is filled) Each month, VC features one CNF author as a part […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Discovery by Dee Allen In New York City during the Truman years, two photographers met and worked with their greatest discovery – a blue-eyed, fresh-faced brunette from Nashville who stepped before their cameras, bound to change the game. The poems in Discovery – Oakland performance poet […]
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If I had to describe Michael Chang’s Synthetic Jungle, I might point to the opening line of“白球鞋 WHITE TENNIS SHOES,” “‘poetry of the everyday’ means boring poetry.” It’s funny,pointed, and true, the type of highly quotable line you want to share with all your friends and allyour enemies. It’s also fascinating because Synthetic Jungle feels […]
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Sundress is currently looking for Editorial Interns for the Sundress Academy for the Arts and Sundress Publications. The internship for Sundress Publications will be remote while the internship for the Sundress Academy for the Arts will take place in Knoxville, TN. To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators NDA by Lily Lady NDA by poet and filmmaker Lily Lady is an intimate and opaque poetry collection about [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. Spiral upward, downward, and side to side. From the safe words of New York to the alleys of Los Angeles….and all the flights in […]
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To do it again,I’d go stream rock rural.and walk the vast county fields. I’d look at trash.The useless itemsthat people throw from cars.And I’d be happy about it.A slow country happy.One withoutthe fear of carelessness. I’d stop for a diner lunchand a filling station sodastraight from the ice chest. Most of all,I’d listen to the […]
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A first impression: the poems seem so impersonal as to be deeply personal. Words that resonate: sun, meadow, redemption, tomorrow, promise and…what else? Wandering and moon. A Long Walk is birth and death, fate and will, time and love. Spare, essential, intimate, each poem takes on a personality. Picture a human figure crossing an inner landscape. One thing common […]
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Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival Fellowships is currently accepting registration fellowship applications from people who are not enrolled in a degree program with access to creative writing instruction or have had a book of poems published or accepted for publication by a United States press for their second annual poetry festival. To apply, submit 4–5 poems […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Crimson Stain: Poems Inspired by King’s letter from jail, Real Life & a Facet of Blood Diamond Culture by Dee Allen In Winter 2007, a full-time college student broke 7 years of writer’s block by writing a new poem, generated while reading Martin Luther King’s Letter […]
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I was interested in this hybrid collection because of its fluid approach towards the concepts of gender and genre. I have a cursory understanding of some of the “inherited rage of South Asian women” that Sindu writes of, as I grew up in Southeast Asia and have some knowledge of associated cultural experiences and expectations, so […]
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Small Harbor Publishing is accepting chapbook submissions for The Marginalia Series. Chapbooks should be written by traditionally marginalized writers, be between 20-40 pages and include a title page, table of contents, and a list of acknowledgments for previously published poems (the collection as a whole must be unpublished). Deadline: March 31st. Hub City Press is […]
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Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators The Sadness of Shadows by Lola Ancira (translated by Juana Adcock) Lola Ancira’s third short story collection, and the first to be translated into English, gives voice to those who have been marginalised and condemned to live life in the shadows of lunacy, nostalgia, loss and […]
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The sonnet, as a traditional poetic form, has often been used by writers as a means for depicting and paying homage to a beloved. And, given the enduring presence of the sonnet within poetry, it should be no surprise then that many (from Renaissance writers to the Romantics to our contemporaries) have used, broken, and […]
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Remington Review is accepting submissions of up to five pieces of art, CNF of up to 3000 words, fiction of up to 3000 words, and up to five poems for its next issue until March 8th. Send submissions as Word Docs and brief third-person bio via email with your name and submission’s genre in the […]
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VAGABOND CITY 