The New Guard literary review - Softcover
The New Guard literary review is an annual journal founded in Knightville, Maine. TNG is the only independent multi-genre review in the state. We offer two contests that award $1,000 each and publication each year, one in fiction (The Machigonne Fiction Contest) and one in poetry (The Knightville Poetry Contest). Each year the judges change, and the editors change, with the exception of Shanna McNair, the founding editor and publisher. Our inaugural contests were judged by Donald Hall and Debra Spark, and our present contests (2011) will be judged by Charles Simic and David Plante. We have a letters section each issue, with contributors such as Maxine Kumin, Sven Birkirts, Thomas Lynch, Adam Braver, Scott Wolven and Tom Grimes. Our first letter section was entitled "Writers to Writers: Fan Letters to the Dead." We also have nonfiction contributors to each issue. Our 2010 nonfiction contributors were Bill Roorbach and Jaed Coffin. We are also a proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP).
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
The New Guard on Winning Writers Poetry Insider, interview by Jendi Reiter (Summer, 2011) (Excerpt) --Winning Writers Poetry Insider dot com
Interview by Chad Frisbie (Spring, 2011) The title choices of new literary magazines like Guernica or Drunken Boat have this artful potential to hint at the publication s editorial leanings. Newer journals typically depart from the tradition of slapping the word Review to a University or place (Paris Review, Harvard Review, etc.). In another place and time, I could write a civilized article maintaining why these prestigious titles are unfair to writers and impede the democratization of literature. But back in Maine, the newest magazine is not the Kennebunkport Review, it's The New Guard , a name that editor and publisher Shanna McNair says gave her hope and courage and adrenaline for a publishing world that needs more open-minded paradigms. McNair aims to represent the spectrum of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction written today. Within each of these genres, her magazine welcomes so-called experimental, literary, and narrative categories under one roof and intends to spark conversation as to the meaning of "new." Maybe nodding to the death of an old guard, The New Guard kicks off with a series of 13 fan letters written by 13 living writers addressed to deceased literary superstars. What would you say to the ghost of Wallace Stevens? Or Agatha Christie? Each forthcoming issue will begin with a similar letter series that orbits many voices around one concept. In a sense, fan letters to dead writers reflect what McNair has in mind for the magazine s ideal poetry and fiction submissions: Find your own tradition, what you think is traditional, and then insert your own experiment... grounded but really new. The annual journal was born alongside two annual $1,000 prize contests. Payne Ratner won the Machigonne Fiction Contest for "Fish Story," judged this year by celebrated Maine fiction writer Debra Spark. With humor so dark you might mistake it for chocolate, Payne s piece follows an office worker who one day finds a fish plopped into his lap, as if dropped from the drop tile ceiling, and then risks his own crumbling world in a struggle to save the creature s life. William Derge won the $1,000 Knightville Poetry contest, judged this year by former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall. Derge's poem, "The Red Chair," peers into the lives and thoughts of characters in de Hooch s painting Interior. McNair, who is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction at University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast Program said sending those checks to the winners was one of my happiest days ever. At the end of the day, she continued, we re here for writers... It s not about me or my concept. It s about giving people what they deserve as writers. The New Guard joins a cadre of Maine lit mags that includes the nationally renowned Beloit Poetry Journal and famed Portland-based Café Review. The New Guard is currently open to submissions from writers everywhere for the 2011 Machigonne Fiction Contest and Knightville Poetry Contest. Deadline: September 1. If you'd like a cheeky submission solicitation for these contests, check out The New Guard's YouTube video (available through our website). For full interview please see the source below. --liveworkportland dot org
Dear Mr. Dickens, You re great! Love, me. TNG article by Suzanne Strempek Shea (Winter 2011)(Excerpt) The lack of forwarding addresses didn t stop a group of acclaimed writers and poets from penning fan letters to their deceased literary heroes. Thirteen such missives fill the very first pages of the very first issue of The New Guard, a journal founded recently by 41-year-old Knightville, Maine, writer Shanna McNair after two years of work creating her state s first independent multi-genre review. That included mulling that all-important first impression made on the reader as the issue is opened. It is part of TNG s mission to put newcomers in print alongside established writers and I wanted to find a fun way to include a lot of well-known writers, McNair says. I had a different idea kicking around, for a virtual roundtable discussion about experiment and narrative and how they work in juxtaposition. But the thing is, I thought it would be dry. So this fall she created her own mini-roundtable, brainstorming ideas with noted popular fiction writer Scott Wolven, her mentor at the University of Southern Maine s Stonecoast master of fine arts program in creative writing. I guess I always think of dead writers as somehow looking over living writers and the letter seemed like a natural thing, Wolven says. I was trying to think of something that would leave a literary mark where would we be without the interviews of The Paris Review? So [the letters might be] a little something to give the journal something different but possibly important. McNair agreed, calling the idea a stroke of genius. Not only did the fan letters create a vehicle for several writers to contribute something short and passionate, there was now also a kind of introductory nod from those of the established Guard at large. So I placed them together in the front of the review to kick off the book with a nod to our past writers, as present writers nod to TNG. Taking up the invitation to kick off the 190-page journal of poetry and prose were essayist and critic Sven Birkerts, who writes to Julio Cortazar, an Argentinean novelist who influenced a generation of Latin writers along with Michigan-native Latvian-rooted Birkerts. "How do we measure an influence?" Birkerts asks Cortazar. "Hard to say. At one point, decades ago, you were everywhere in my prose. I could go to early pages now and mark the phrases out one after the next. That changed. I flatter myself to think that I grew a voice of my own. Does that mean I have shed you, lost you? No, more likely I have somehow metabolized your influence." Novelist Boman Desai wrote to Agatha Christie - or "My Dear Dame Agatha," as the man who signs himself "Your acolyte" addresses her: "I beg your pardon, but I speak with the greatest affection and admiration though you would be the first to pooh-pooh what I say." Desai chastises her for considering herself "not really an author" despite having sold more than four billion books, being the most translated author ever and the writer of a play, The Mousetrap which opened in 1952 and has been performed more than 23,000 times. "You stand on the shoulders of Shakespeare as much as he smiles over yours," Desai writes, and I remain floundering in the wake of your red herrings." Poet and writer Maxine Kumin begins her letter, to W.H. Auden, with the familiar "Wystan (If I may?)" and then ponders the fact of "this aging feminist taking a dead white male as a role model!" But she does, citing as her reason Auden's trochees, trimeter and tetrameter, "that seamless melding of ideational content and metaphor. That was how I wanted to sound someday." Please see the source for full interview. --obitmag dot com
Interview by Chad Frisbie (Spring, 2011) The title choices of new literary magazines like Guernica or Drunken Boat have this artful potential to hint at the publication s editorial leanings. Newer journals typically depart from the tradition of slapping the word Review to a University or place (Paris Review, Harvard Review, etc.). In another place and time, I could write a civilized article maintaining why these prestigious titles are unfair to writers and impede the democratization of literature. But back in Maine, the newest magazine is not the Kennebunkport Review, it's The New Guard , a name that editor and publisher Shanna McNair says gave her hope and courage and adrenaline for a publishing world that needs more open-minded paradigms. McNair aims to represent the spectrum of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction written today. Within each of these genres, her magazine welcomes so-called experimental, literary, and narrative categories under one roof and intends to spark conversation as to the meaning of "new." Maybe nodding to the death of an old guard, The New Guard kicks off with a series of 13 fan letters written by 13 living writers addressed to deceased literary superstars. What would you say to the ghost of Wallace Stevens? Or Agatha Christie? Each forthcoming issue will begin with a similar letter series that orbits many voices around one concept. In a sense, fan letters to dead writers reflect what McNair has in mind for the magazine s ideal poetry and fiction submissions: Find your own tradition, what you think is traditional, and then insert your own experiment... grounded but really new. The annual journal was born alongside two annual $1,000 prize contests. Payne Ratner won the Machigonne Fiction Contest for "Fish Story," judged this year by celebrated Maine fiction writer Debra Spark. With humor so dark you might mistake it for chocolate, Payne s piece follows an office worker who one day finds a fish plopped into his lap, as if dropped from the drop tile ceiling, and then risks his own crumbling world in a struggle to save the creature s life. William Derge won the $1,000 Knightville Poetry contest, judged this year by former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall. Derge's poem, "The Red Chair," peers into the lives and thoughts of characters in de Hooch s painting Interior. McNair, who is an M.F.A. candidate in fiction at University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast Program said sending those checks to the winners was one of my happiest days ever. At the end of the day, she continued, we re here for writers... It s not about me or my concept. It s about giving people what they deserve as writers. The New Guard joins a cadre of Maine lit mags that includes the nationally renowned Beloit Poetry Journal and famed Portland-based Café Review. The New Guard is currently open to submissions from writers everywhere for the 2011 Machigonne Fiction Contest and Knightville Poetry Contest. Deadline: September 1. If you'd like a cheeky submission solicitation for these contests, check out The New Guard's YouTube video (available through our website). For full interview please see the source below. --liveworkportland dot org
Dear Mr. Dickens, You re great! Love, me. TNG article by Suzanne Strempek Shea (Winter 2011)(Excerpt) The lack of forwarding addresses didn t stop a group of acclaimed writers and poets from penning fan letters to their deceased literary heroes. Thirteen such missives fill the very first pages of the very first issue of The New Guard, a journal founded recently by 41-year-old Knightville, Maine, writer Shanna McNair after two years of work creating her state s first independent multi-genre review. That included mulling that all-important first impression made on the reader as the issue is opened. It is part of TNG s mission to put newcomers in print alongside established writers and I wanted to find a fun way to include a lot of well-known writers, McNair says. I had a different idea kicking around, for a virtual roundtable discussion about experiment and narrative and how they work in juxtaposition. But the thing is, I thought it would be dry. So this fall she created her own mini-roundtable, brainstorming ideas with noted popular fiction writer Scott Wolven, her mentor at the University of Southern Maine s Stonecoast master of fine arts program in creative writing. I guess I always think of dead writers as somehow looking over living writers and the letter seemed like a natural thing, Wolven says. I was trying to think of something that would leave a literary mark where would we be without the interviews of The Paris Review? So [the letters might be] a little something to give the journal something different but possibly important. McNair agreed, calling the idea a stroke of genius. Not only did the fan letters create a vehicle for several writers to contribute something short and passionate, there was now also a kind of introductory nod from those of the established Guard at large. So I placed them together in the front of the review to kick off the book with a nod to our past writers, as present writers nod to TNG. Taking up the invitation to kick off the 190-page journal of poetry and prose were essayist and critic Sven Birkerts, who writes to Julio Cortazar, an Argentinean novelist who influenced a generation of Latin writers along with Michigan-native Latvian-rooted Birkerts. "How do we measure an influence?" Birkerts asks Cortazar. "Hard to say. At one point, decades ago, you were everywhere in my prose. I could go to early pages now and mark the phrases out one after the next. That changed. I flatter myself to think that I grew a voice of my own. Does that mean I have shed you, lost you? No, more likely I have somehow metabolized your influence." Novelist Boman Desai wrote to Agatha Christie - or "My Dear Dame Agatha," as the man who signs himself "Your acolyte" addresses her: "I beg your pardon, but I speak with the greatest affection and admiration though you would be the first to pooh-pooh what I say." Desai chastises her for considering herself "not really an author" despite having sold more than four billion books, being the most translated author ever and the writer of a play, The Mousetrap which opened in 1952 and has been performed more than 23,000 times. "You stand on the shoulders of Shakespeare as much as he smiles over yours," Desai writes, and I remain floundering in the wake of your red herrings." Poet and writer Maxine Kumin begins her letter, to W.H. Auden, with the familiar "Wystan (If I may?)" and then ponders the fact of "this aging feminist taking a dead white male as a role model!" But she does, citing as her reason Auden's trochees, trimeter and tetrameter, "that seamless melding of ideational content and metaphor. That was how I wanted to sound someday." Please see the source for full interview. --obitmag dot com
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherShanna McNair
- Publication date2010
- ISBN 10 0615428088
- ISBN 13 9780615428086
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages190
- EditorShanna McNair
- IllustratorE. Kendra Denny
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The New Guard literary review
Published by
Shanna McNair
(2010)
ISBN 10: 0615428088
ISBN 13: 9780615428086
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paperback
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description paperback. Condition: Very Good. E. Kendra Denny (illustrator). Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!. Seller Inventory # S_401080750
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