Literary MagNet

by
Staff
From the November/December 2011 issue of
Poets & Writers Magazine

Memoir Journal, the nonprofit that publishes Memoir (and) (memoirjournal.squarespace.com), the three-year-old lit mag based in Emeryville, California, earlier this year launched the (In)Visible Memoirs Project, an outreach program that funds teaching writers to conduct workshops for underserved communities—past participants have included incarcerated juveniles and gay and lesbian seniors—then select and edit work from those workshops for year-end publication in an anthology available in Bay Area bookstores and through Memoir Journal’s website. As for standard submissions to Memoir (and), this month the editors will begin accepting poetry, prose, and “graphic memoirs.” For more information about the outreach program, and for submission guidelines, visit the website.

In the most recent issue of Harvard Review (hcl.harvard.edu/harvardreview)—the nineteen-year-old biannual that has published work by luminaries such as John Ashbery, Arthur Miller, and John Updike—editor Christina Thompson makes room in her editor’s note to acknowledge the community behind the journal. She names some of the people who bring a print publication into being: the printer’s account manager (he’s “like an old friend…I remember when his children were born”); the designer, whom Thompson has worked with for close to ten years (“I also remember when he got married and when his first child was born”); and the copyeditor (“she’s both the first and, in some sense, the most attentive reader,” who writes notes such as “I am grateful to have had an opportunity to read this one”). For those ready to submit their work to Thompson’s team, the journal is currently accepting poetry and prose; visit the website for guidelines.

The aim of the newly launched Huizache (www.centrovictoria.net/huizache.html)—an annual magazine published by CentroVictoria, the Center for Mexican American Literature and Culture at the University of Houston in Victoria, Texas—is to promote voices that are “motivated, not silenced, by harsh, unwelcoming conditions.” Among the voices featured in the first issue are those of Sherman Alexie, Sandra Cisneros, and Aracelis Girmay. Editor Diana López is currently accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that challenge “ethnic, gender, or social stereotypes”; she notes that while the magazine’s focus is on the Latino community, “it is not limited to it.” 

The first issue of the Coffin Factory (thecoffinfactory.com)—the Brooklyn, New York–based journal whose aim is to “serve as a nexus between readers, writers, and the book publishing industry”—features work by Roberto Bolaño, Milan Kundera, Bonnie Nadzam, and Joyce Carol Oates. The magazine is scheduled to be published three times a year, and while editors Laura Isaacman and Randy Rosenthal do not accept unsolicited poetry, they are accepting submissions of fiction and essays under six thousand words via e-mail. Visit the website for guidelines.

Monday Night (www.mondaynightlit.com), the annual available in true grassroots lit-mag format—stapled, in black and white—is celebrating ten years of publication with a double issue. Editors Jessica Wickens, Nana K. Twumasi, and Heather Miller, “friends who bound their work together, and continue to do the same for unpublished and emerging writers,” are accepting submissions of poetry and prose through December

To mark its fortieth anniversary, Ploughshares (pshares.org), the guest-edited magazine published three times a year at Boston’s Emerson College, released a special issue featuring new work from former guest editors, including Jane Hirshfield and Jay Neugeboren. And on November 14 the journal will throw a gala at Boston’s Paramount Theatre, hosted by comedian Denis Leary, with readings by Alice Hoffman, Sebastian Junger, and Andre Dubus III.