New World Writing Quarterly

BlipMagazine has changed its name to New World Writing after the greatlit­er­ary mag­a­zine of the 1950’s. They were, of course, think­ing of world writ­ing, where­as we are think­ing more of the (per­pet­u­al­ly) new –more

I Won’t Get Lost

On the bus, the guy wants to know where he should go tonight. He’s in from San Diego, sleep­ing on a stranger’s couch. The strangers are at work and he’s wan­der­ing the city by himself.

I explain the dif­fer­ence between East and West 6th—hipster ver­sus drunk­en col­lege stu­dent, old­er ver­sus maybe underage.

I hear the East Side’s dan­ger­ous, he says.

To make last cook­ies, you first must make not-last cookies—Chocolate-Almond Biscotti, packed in a large tea tin. These you must give to your father to give to his sis­ter at Christmastime, his sis­ter hav­ing stayed home in New York City, as she was too ill to vis­it Boston for the holiday.

Of course, you can’t go so far as to call this a batch of “every­day” cook­ies, because your aunt is so sick, but they are at least vague­ly feel-good cook­ies because while she’s lost her appetite for almost every­thing else, your aunt (whom you have always resem­bled) eats them one right after the oth­er while lying on the couch in the apart­ment she shares with your father, attached to an oxy­gen tank and watch­ing Dr. Phil with her nurse’s aide.

Recently some folks have object­ed to hav­ing their work turned down via form let­ter. We regret that this is a nec­es­sary expe­di­ent, but there it is. We want to alert all authors who may be sub­mit­ting work to BLIP that it is our stan­dard prac­tice to noti­fy –more

Lots of crap pho­ny reg­is­tra­tions have befall­en us & so we have erased all reg­is­tra­tions and stopped reg­is­ter­ing folk. Taking the ball by the horns.  Please for­give if you were a gen­uine reg­is­trant and were erased. Means noth­ing. Personal.

The new issue is online now, com­prised most­ly of pieces we’ve pub­lished since the Summer 2012 issue. We’re fea­tur­ing Robert Pawlowski, Bob Hicok, George Saunders, Bobbie Ann Mason, –more

At Litquake 2012, San Francisco’s lit­er­ary fes­ti­val, dis­cov­er flash fic­tion with a sam­pler of read­ings from sev­en beloved authors and teach­ers of the short-short form. Blending poet­ry and prose, these tiny, truf­fle-like sto­ries are filled with a rare, –more

We are read­ing fic­tion, non­fic­tion and poet­ry. If you’d like to sub­mit, please fol­low the link below, leave a short bio note and any­thing else we might need to know. We are hap­py to read work of any kind, any length. Many thanks for your interest.

–more

Our friends at Mississippi Review have pub­lished, under the fine edi­to­r­i­al hand of Julia Mae Johnson, an anthol­o­gy of thir­ty years of sto­ries, poems, essays and inter­views pub­lished in MR when Frederick Barthelme was its edi­tor. –more

Sitting beside a suf­fer­ing, hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing zebra (real­ly a horse with stripes) was not new to the women in my fam­i­ly. My moth­er had expe­ri­enced it, as had my grand­moth­er and my grand­moth­er’s grand­moth­er. Now it was my turn

“For every pot there is a lid,” my moth­er said before she died. Nobody knew why she said it or why only females cried.

Here it was again, a life and death moment in the ani­mal king­dom call­ing for human com­pas­sion. In many ways this expe­ri­ence would be no dif­fer­ent than fish­ing for com­pli­ments from a bored hus­band on weekends.

We’ve just put up a new sec­tion of a new nov­el from Mary Grimm along with an inter­view in which Mary talks about pub­lish­ing on the Web, e‑books, and oth­er top­ics that might be of inter­est to our read­ers. Click the fol­low­ing link to vis­it Mary Grimm.

I still don’t love you; my arm fell off.

I see my ex at the gro­cery, peck­ing at fruit, those new mini-water­mel­ons. I catch the back of her head, her red hair, from the auto­mat­ic doors, her pur­ple tee from two years ago’s 5K for dys­tro­phy. One change: Her left arm is gone, the short sleeve tied into a knot at the shoulder. 

Congratulations to Dorianne Laux and George Singleton both of whom have had work from New World Writing select­ed for inclu­sion in the new edi­tion of Best of the Net, due out soon from Sundress Publications.

Driftwood

There’s no rea­son to call each oth­er Tic and Tac, but we do just to keep up with that kind of child­hood bond, the one formed acci­dent­ly because par­ents put us togeth­er in rooms and in cars, bound into seat­belts and bunk beds. You’re almost always wil­ing to share your caramels, sticky in the white bag, sea air melt­ing them wet. I say, “It sucks that dad’s a fag­got,” and you say nothing.

Julia knocked on the door and I answered in a pair of rat­ty blue jeans, hold­ing a put­ter and three golf balls. She had a friend with her, a teenage boy, who did all the talk­ing at first. He deliv­ered a script­ed speech about cre­ation ver­sus evo­lu­tion, and read from Hebrews some­thing that said

WE’RE READING NEW FICTION AND NONFICTION with an eye toward the April 2012 issue. If you’d like to sub­mit, please fol­low the link below, leave a short bio note and any­thing else we might need to know. We are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in work of medi­um –more

Self-Checkout

The man behind her said, “Let me ask you a ques­tion,” but she didn’t turn to see what the ques­tion would be.  Something about what he said both­ered her—it was the way he put it.  She was out of sorts today, but, nev­er­the­less, what he said was not the same as ask­ing, “Can I ask you some­thing?” Or say­ing, “Excuse me, I’ve been wondering…” 

Whoa, Hey

The mail­man deliv­ers the pack­age on Tuesday. I rip open the small white Fed-ex enve­lope and a clear zip-lock sand­wich bag falls out from between two pieces of card­board. Inside is the necklace—a large met­al cutout of two fists side by side with pinkies extend­ed. “Too much rock for one hand.” It hangs from a cheap met­al chain.