Subscriber News: February 2026
Recent Honors
Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter's fourth full-length poetry collection, Introvert Pervert, will be published by The Word Works in March and is now available for pre-order. Watch for the exclusive cover reveal at Electric Literature on February 19. Jendi will be reading from the book at two events at the AWP Conference at the Baltimore Convention Center next month. On Thursday, March 5, at 6pm, Jendi will be part of an offsite reading with fellow trans and nonbinary writers J Brooke (I Can Tell You The Version That Will Make You Take My Side, 2026), Kelsey L. Smoot (SOULMATE AS A VERB, 2026), and Jackie Domenus (No Offense: A Memoir in Essays, 2025) at The Black Genius Art Show, 106 North Eutaw Street #1. This event is a fundraiser for the Trans Youth Emergency Project. Then on Friday, March 6, at 5:30pm, Jendi will read with other Word Works authors launching new books at AWP (see program guide for location within the conference center).
Congratulations to Garret Keizer. His essay collection Starting from Paterson will be published by Eastover Books in June and is now available for pre-order. Acclaimed novelist Richard Russo says, "Keizer's essays are by turns challenging, funny, searching, biting, and profound." Visit his website for more books of prose and poetry.
Congratulations to Jeff Walt. His poem "For the Boy Who Likes Pink" won the 2025 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, judged by Maria Mazziotti Gillan. This award, sponsored by the San Diego Poetry Annual, gives prizes up to $1,000. The most recent submission period was June 15-October 15. The award ceremony will take place April 26 at the San Diego Central Library. His story "Really Loved" won one of four runner-up prizes in the 2026 Saints & Sinners Literary Festival Short Fiction Contest, judged by Justin Torres, and will be included in the festival anthology. The most recent submission period for this contest with prizes up to $500 was May 1-October 15. Jeff's poems "Palm Springs Blues" and "The Dogs of Chernobyl" were published in ArLiJo, Issue #218.
Congratulations to Alice McVeigh. Her novel Marianne: A Sense and Sensibility Sequel (2025), has won gold medals in the Literary Global Book Awards (romance category), the American Writing Awards (romance), the Historical Fiction Company Book Awards (historical romance), the Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Awards (literary), and Best in Genre in the Bookshelf Book Awards. The novel is also a semifinalist for Chanticleer's Goethe Book Award. Visit her website for her entire series of Austenesque novels.
Congratulations to James K. Zimmerman. His poetry chapbook Uncertainty is now available from Bottlecap Press. He kindly shares a sample poem here. From the publisher's blurb: Uncertainty "takes the reader on a journey into the depth and breadth of the Anthropocene Era. How we regard oil—the liquidified remains of flora and dinosaurs—as a gift; how we pollute our water supply with the detritus of our consumerist way of life...In the end, there is hope that in reconnection to each other and to earth as a living creature, we can transcend the uncertain, dark future that may await us."
Recent Publications
Suanne Laqueur's novel The Great Dane is now available on Amazon. A man grieving his son's death seeks hidden meaning in the video game that the young man played, leading to an intimate connection with the game's creator.
Richard Eric Johnson's poem "Loss of Hearing a Gain" was published in the literary journal Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts, Issue #92. Read archived issues on their website.
Gail Thomas will be teaching a four-week online course in March and April on "Revising and Polishing Your Poems" through Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. Sign up here.
Eva Tortora had an op-ed published in the NY Daily News on December 24.
Duane L. Herrmann's story "Rabbit Boy" was published in January at Masticadores.
Louisa Prince's flash fiction story "Negative Space" was published in Suddenly, and Without Warning.
Published: February 6, 2026
