Literary MagNet

by
Staff
From the September/October 2010 issue of
Poets & Writers Magazine

Upstreet (www.upstreet-mag.org), the annual journal founded in 2005 by publisher and editor Vivian Dorsel and based in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is now open for submissions. Writers are invited to submit poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for the seventh issue, due out in July 2011. Visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

In his first Editor's Note for the Iowa Review (iowareview.uiowa.edu), Russell Scott Valentino, who took the helm last year following the departure of seasoned editor David Hamilton, acknowledged that "the switch from one editor to another can be a traumatic thing for a magazine and a reading public." Valentino chose "a middle course" in the journal's redesign ("neither sailing away into the ether nor slinking off into a backwater") and the editorial content of his first issue (some of the work was chosen under Hamilton's guidance and some under his). One thing that hasn't changed is the journal's submission policy: Unsolicited poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, reviews, and interviews are accepted via postal mail only from September through November.

Fogged Clarity (foggedclarity.com), the year-old monthly online journal based in Muskegon, Michigan, which features poetry, fiction, essays, visual art, interviews, and music, published its first print issue this summer, including work by Joe Meno, Benjamin Percy, and Terese Svoboda, among others. Writers may submit poetry or prose for either edition via e-mail: submissions@foggedclarity.com.

A decade has passed since jubilat (www.jubilat.org) was founded by Robert Casper, Christian Hawkey, Kelly Le Fave, and Michael Teig at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, but the biannual journal is still going strong. While the masthead reflects some changes—publisher Casper is no longer listed as an editor, Hawkey and Teig are now editors-at-large, and Le Fave is no longer associated with the journal—current editors Cathy Park Hong and Evie Shockley still accept work during the journal's open-submission period, which begins this month. They aren't looking for short stories, but they do welcome "poetry and art, as well as other forms of writing on poetry, poetics or subjects that have nothing to do with poetry," via the online submission manager.

To best capture the theme of the latest issue of Granta (www.granta.com), artistic director Michael Salu teamed up with the St Bride Library to create a cover "primed with history and wisdom"—a composite photograph of metal letterpress type blocks and a custom-made metal cast of the logo. The issue, titled "Going Back," features an exclusive excerpt from the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography, to be published in November by the University of California in Berkeley. Visit Granta's Web site to see a slideshow of the cover-making process and for submission guidelines.

Back from their summer hiatus this month, the editors of Cellpoems (cellpoems.org)—a new "txt msg poetry journal" and recent winner of the National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading Prize—are busy sending poems via text message to subscribers' cell phones twice a week. Recognizing the medium's bad reputation, however, the editors make it clear: They seek not to "shrink the attention spans or subject good writers and readers to the inanities of text message abbreviations" but instead to take advantage of the short form and "present work that has undergone the duress of revision." Poets may submit work via text to (317) 426-POEM or the online form.