Summer 2021: Publication Opportunities for Writers

by Blessing Christopher As the spring semester winds down, most literary magazines run by MFA programs are currently closed for submissions. However, other markets are accepting stories in the summer. Here are some places to send your work. The Missouri Review Founded in 1978, The Missouri Review accepts fiction, nonfiction and poetry submissions all year …

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Interview with an Editor: Lauran Jones, Undergraduate Publisher Dedicated to Lifting Black Voices

by Alexa Garvoille Lauran Jones is a Creative Writing Major at UNC-Wilmington, graduating with a BFA and Certificate in Publishing in May 2022. She is a creative writer, graphic designer, and the founding editor-in-chief of UNCW’s Black literary journal, Seabreeze: A Literary Diaspora. She is also the layout designer for UNCW’s Atlantis: A Creative Magazine. …

Reader Spotlight: Annie Raab

What’s your favorite sandwich?Beef on weck. It’s essentially a roast beef sandwich with caraway seeds and coarse ground salt on the bun, Swiss cheese, and au jus. I’m also a sucker for Chicago style Italian beef drenched in spicy giardiniera and juices. Just gimme all the Wet Meat.What’s your favorite story? (anecdote or literally short …

Flash Creative Nonfiction: Capturing a Moment in Time

by Blessing Christopher It feels like everything went to sleep last year after COVID-19 struck. Thankfully, there are indications that the world will heave a collective sigh of relief in the near future. If you’re one of the writers who found it hard to write in the thick of the lockdown, here’s hoping that the …

Hat Exchange: How to Balance Editing and Teaching as an MFA

by Alexa Garvoille As a staffer for the minnesota review, I wear many hats. Before I get to the hats, though, let me mix my metaphors so you know how the sausage is made. And I’m only interested in the sausage because sometimes the machine that makes the sausage is also asked to make hats. Or …

Why You Should Read John Murillo’s “Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry”

By Honora Ankong As Black people, our existences are a thing of poetry. We are poems and we do poems long before we have the “language” for it. Poetry is everywhere always— it is ancestral and rooted deep in our bones. John Murillo’s 2020 poetry collection “Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry” is a testament to the Black …

Extremely Practical Plant Care Tips

By: Ivan Davenny I don’t mean to brag, but in the last year I have kept almost two plants alive. Now, rather than hoard my expertise, I wanted to go over a few common problems people have with their plants, and offer my Extremely Practical Tips. Q: What does it mean if the leaves on …

TMR Readers Spotlight Series: Alexa Garvoille

What’s your most controversial belief about literature? I have an extremely personal relationship with reading. Illustration 1: when I was sixteen I would write in the margins of books which friends certain characters reminded me of (including when I read Crime and Punishment, and yes, one of my friends reminded me of an ax-murderer). Illustration …

TMR Readers Spotlight Series: “A Peek at my Interiority”

by Honora Ankong What’s your astrological sign?   Pisces (sun) + Virgo (moon) + Capricorn (rising)  In these pandemic days when we’re all sheltering-in-place, what does your home feel like?  Most days in my tiny Blacksburg apartment waft with the scent of incense/ candles/ palo santo. Every corner of every room is filled with either Miss …

Mourning and Reimagining through Queer Young-Adult Fiction

by Bessie Flores Zaldívar I grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras-- queer, girl-bodied, with two languages throbbing on my tongue. Like many writers, I developed an early love for stories and, subsequently, reading. Knowing two languages from an early age meant more stories. More words, more worlds. But both of my languages-- English and Spanish-- are …

Writing Exercises for Flash Fiction

By Annie Raab There’s no doubt about it: flash fiction is HOT right now. Maybe our text-and-tweet driven world is having some influence on creative practices. Or our attention spans are becoming more receptive to bite-sized stories as opposed to lengthy novels. But flash fiction isn’t as easy as it looks. The genre behaves more …

Methods for Concentration

By Annie Raab Sometimes it seems that writers possess a uniquely short attention span. Between generating words, researching esoteric topics to render believable stories, and attempting to maintain at least partially in reality, the battle for attention is a competitive field. Luckily, humans have been struggling to concentrate on tasks long before the internet, and …

How D&D Made Me Excited to Write Again

I’m in my last year of my MFA, and in May, I will leave my teaching stipend and the structure of the past three years and enter “the real world,” a place rocked by COVID-19 and the uncertainty it’s brought. My thesis is due soon, but working on fiction this year has been a struggle. …

Writing off the Page: A Sampling of Contemporary Women and Non-Binary Writers with Interdisciplinary Practices

As a young writer, I aimed to bring my artistic and poetic practices into conversation with one another, but I searched for role models without many leads. Aimless Google searches would come up mostly dry. Poetry installation? Poetry sculptures? Hyperlink poetry? When I asked my early creative writing professors about poets working off the page, …

How to Write When You Don’t Feel Like Writing

Do you remember when Twitter was full of homemade bread and people showing off their stacks of toilet paper? It was in the early days of lockdown when lots of people suddenly found themselves working from home. Folks could attend Zoom meetings wearing pajamas, take blissful naps throughout the day, and bake sourdough bread in …

Music for Reading and Writing

Sometimes I like to listen to music while I read or write. I know some people that hate it, some people that love it, some people that can only listen to certain songs or records.  Listening to music while reading or writing can be helpful if the neighbors are yelling at each other, or the …

Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters

I was reading Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima at the beginning of the pandemic. Di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters were first distributed between 1968 and 1971 through the Liberation News Service, letter by letter, in two hundred newspapers across so-called Canada and USA. I’ve been reading a PDF version put out by The Anarchist Library …

Getting in the Writing Groove

First put on a comfortable sweatshirt, one that fits. If the sleeves are too long, they’ll get caught on your hands when you’re typing and mask the keys.  Next, get yourself a snack, something that tastes relatively bland, so you won’t want to get up to grab more, but something that will also fill you …

“a certain solace in writing”: Interview with Shea Vassar, Writer and Film Critic, and Citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in Commemoration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day

I virtually sat down with Shea Vassar to talk a bit about Indigenous Peoples' Day and what she’s been up to. Shea Vassar is a Cherokee Nation citizen and member of the Native American Journalists Association. She is based on Lenape & Canarsie land (Brooklyn, NY). Her film criticism career started as something to do …

Writing Prompts for Uncertain Times

Sometimes, & especially in these uncertain & weird times, gleaning inspiration to write or create in general is extremely difficult. What has been getting me through is creating or researching prompts that help transport my worried brain into a place of writing/thinking about making. Here are a few for you to try, get your minds, …