Deadlines are as follows
March 1 – Spring
June 1 – Summer
September 1 – Autumn
December 1 – Winter
Please read this section before submitting work.
Please include some form of identification in the work itself.
All submissions must be in electronic form. Our preference is an MS Word file uploaded through the system below.
By submitting work to us you grant us a non-exclusive licence to publish your work in any form we see fit. You may withdraw a submission up untill the issue deadline (see above).
We don't pay so you retain all copyrights. If we publish your work online we may include it in a printed edition.
Poetry may be submitted in any length. Please don't submit 100 poems and ask us to pick 3.
Fiction may be submitted in three formats:
very short stories less than 500 words in length
short stories less than 1000 words in length
Short stories that don’t fit the above should be less than 3000 words.
We also accept longer forms of fiction occasionally.
Non-Fiction is just that so lets see some
interesting footnotes. Non-fiction should be short, (a lot) less than 5000
words
Book Reviews should be positive unless the author
is a well-known blowhard. Our mission is to encourage literature not
discourage it..
Any form of art may be submitted with the constraint that
it must be something that can be published in 2 dimensions. It’s hard to
publish sculpture but illustrations together with some intelligent prose
count.
Published works are welcome with proper attribution.
Welcome to the twenty eighth issue (Volume 7, no 4) of the Wilderness
House Literary Review. WHLR is a result of the collaboration between a
group of poets and writers who call themselves the Bagel Bards (who have just published their latest anthology).
The stories, articles, poems and examples of art have
been presented as PDF files. This is a format that
allows for a much cleaner presentation than would otherwise be available on
the web. If you don’t have an Adobe Reader (used to read a PDF file) on your
computer you can download one from the Adobe website. The files are large and we hope you will be patient when downloading
but we think the beauty of the words deserves a beautiful presentation.
Finally, the
copyrights are owned by their respective authors whose opinions are theirs
alone and do not reflect the opinions of our sponsors or partners.
We will not be nominating writers for Pushcart Prizes this year. We've spent some time agonizing over this decision but we feel we must stand with our brother editor and contributor, g emil reutter of the Fox Chase Review. To quote the current editor of the Pushcart Prize:
"I have long railed against the e-book and instant Internet publication as damaging to writers. Instant anything is dangerous—great writing takes time. You should long to be as good as John Milton and Reynolds Price, not just barf into the electronic void.”
-Bill Henderson – The Pushcart Prize 2012 Introduction...
Wilderness House Literary Review has published many of the same poets and writers whose names appear in the pages of better known print magazines, those who claim dozens or even hundreds of Pushcart prize winners. Our writers have won Pushcarts, have been multiply nominated for Pushcarts, have been nominated for and have won the National Book Award and have been nominated for and have been finalists for Pulitzers. We don't publish shabby work and neither does the Fox Chase Review.
The truth is that print magazines are expensive and, I suspect, the number of pages printed every year is in decline. Since most literary print magazines are not financially self sustaining they have had to seek shelter under the overhang of an academic institution ... and that's the rub. They have become shills and showcases for the products of the MFA mills that have popped up all over the country. Those of us in the non-academic small press once welcomed the Pushcart Prize as a vehicle for honoring those outside the mainstream. This is no longer the case, the Pushcart Prize has been co-opted by the academy to the exclusion of those it once honored. We can only hope that those involved in selecting the Pushcart Prize return to their roots or, as an alternative, that another prize grows in its place. In any case we would have honored:
Irene Koronas, Phoebe Wilcox, Jim Wilcox, Dennis Daly, Tom Sheehan and Lawrence Kessenich.
By the way, this is not to demean any of the hundreds or thousands of writers who were (and were not) nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Nor do we intend to demean those who win. What we do protest against is the apparent practice of judging a writer as much for the place of publication as for the content of their scribbling.
Our fiction editor loves Anton Chekhov and despairs the notion that there are no latter day Chekhovs submitting works for her consideration. This is not to say that the work he receives isn’t excellent … it’s just not Chekhov. To that end WHLReview announces a new prize for fiction to be called “the Chekhov Prize.” A google search reveals several other Chekhov prizes with cash. Alas we’re not offering cash. We will look for a bearded bobble-head doll. In the mean time we have T-shirts with the Chekhov Prize logo available. Just click on Chekhov's head.
For your reading pleasure we offer an outstanding collection of short stories by:
Our poetry editor, not wanting to be outdone by our fiction editor is pleased to announce the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry. Anyone published in Volume 3 (and beyond) is eligible. We don't have any idea what the prize will consist of - a T-shirt for sure. Perhaps we can find a Plaster of Paris bust of Julius Caesar, put a rose in its mouth and decorate it to look like Gertrude Stein. In the mean time we have T-shirts with the our rose prize logo available. Just click on Gerturde's head.
This years "Rose" prize for poetry goes to Phoebe Wilcox. When asked why our poetry editor Irene said, "Just because."
We have a remarkable lineup of poets, enjoy. But first we have several remarkable translations (transductions?) of
It's a pleasure to be able to review a book by our Poet-in-Residence Tomas O'Leary. Tomas is a poets's poet. What maikes a poet's poet? Pose a question or make a comment to him and Tomas will, more often than not, reply with delightful meter and verse or a charming baratone rendition of some good Irish folk song.
It's also a pleasure to review a book by another, one of our own, Kathleen Spivack who's book With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz & Others, is climbing the charts.
As we said when we started this is a joint
production of Wilderness House Literary Retreat and the “bagel bards”.
The “Bagel Bards” have just published their seventh
anthology. You may purchase them here:
