A handsome book cover that’s right for your genre can increase sales by a factor of two or more. But does working with a professional designer have to feel like a trust fall? Designer Laura Duffy doesn’t think so.

Exits by Stephen C. Pollock

Exits won First Prize for Poetry in the 2024 North Street competition

Award-Winning Poetry and Prose 2025

The best contemporary writing from around the web

Subscriber News: March 2025

Recent honors and publications earned by our newsletter subscribers

Not Quite Write Prize for Flesh Fiction

A$500 prize, contest added: received by August 24

Papaya Press: Richard Siken Tribute Anthology

Call for submissions: received by May 1

Broken Sleep Books: Laurel and Hardy Anthology

Call for submissions: received by April 30

manywor(l)ds

Call for submissions: received by April 30

Story Unlikely

Call for submissions: received by September 29

Sonnet in Triptych

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Anne Brown Essay Prize

1,500 pounds prize, deadline change: received by June 6

A Catalogue of Hurricanes

I’m Done with Birds

After a week away to bury my mother, we found robins nesting above our front door. Was this a cosmic joke, one mother laid to rest, a new mother bivouacking on the porch? But what to do, move future chirps to a nearby spruce, toss out five beating hearts? In…

My Mother Used Her Kohl’s Cash to Buy Her Husband’s Urn

What I remember most from the nights is how they were the same as his mornings. What I remember most from his mornings is that they were still coming. There is no remembrance without pain. Pain from either the wish of re-living it or the memory itself. Sometimes when I…

Ars Poetica

Illustration by Rowan Fridley after Chris Colfer / after Chelsea Dingman / after Rachel Mennies Dear Poem—witness yourself: a crumpled tissue knotted with tear stains dipped in ink. In my dreams, I threw a penny in the only wishing well for miles & you returned, swimming with liquid moons. You…

Shoulder Season

Illustration by Helen Bar-Lev Who are we to decide when traffic to the orchard should peak? Or how to name the first apple that falls and smashes into seconds, into a thing half-wrecked, swelling worthy of cider or apple butter, the ritual my great grandmother presented with her hands until…

Sestina (A Ghost Story)

It's been a while since I've been up to the lake, but I remember well how its surface can look so different, murky-dark or green-slate glass. Its stillness is deceptive unless you stare a while. Then you'll see how much rises up, the signs beneath the surface, minnows, rings of…

Daily Life in Gaza

Only makeshift tents and broken pieces of ground to rest upon. No tombstones. When the rains continue all winter and then stop, sewers still spill over coughing children, who can only mimic play try to sell homemade foods for pocket change. All land crossings closed border gates never entered— not…

Trifecta of Sonnets, New Year’s Day

“We cannot know his legendary head…” —Rilke i. Heaven grays, the river storms. A buck, sculling at the center crest of dusk— his rack, a nest of silver twigs— slashes river-green from river-black. He carves upstream. His wake, a froth of yellow lace. I feel his lease on time, this…

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