Blue Mesa Review

Blue Mesa Review lost University Funding! Come to our Fund Raiser Reading! December 3rd

bluemesalit — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:26:07 +0000

If you can’t attend the reading, but are still interested in donating to support the magazine please make your check out to UNM Foundation, and indicate “Blue Mesa Review Fund” on the memo line.

Mail to:

UNM Foundation
Two Woodward Ctr
700 Lomas NE, Ste 108
Albuquerque, NM 87102

or you can give online at https://unmfund.org/online-giving , select “Arts & Sciences, College of” as the Primary College/Program and indicate “Blue Mesa Review Fund” in the Secondary Program/Fund box.

Once your gift is processed by UNM Foundation, you will receive a receipt for tax purposes in the mail.

Get to Know Poetry Intern Nate Tremba

bluemesalit — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:14:44 +0000

What’s your 6 word memoir? I always got socks for Christmas.

What’s the last book you read? Absalom, Absalom!

What are you doing right now? I’m finishing the last semester of my undergraduate degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. I’m working on few poems and a short story, reading “Melmoth the Wanderer”, playing soccer on the weekends, practicing kung fu, and stay-at-home-daddying my three-year-old twin daughters.

What’s on your iPod right now? I quit music a couple of years ago; it was just ruining my health and my relationships with those I love. I’m a much nicer person now.

What genres do you read in slush? Mostly poetry and some fiction.

What do you look for in the genres you read? In fiction, I look for a strong first paragraph incorporating multiple streams of time, a gripping narrative voice and/or identifiable main character(s), and a succinct introduction to some sort of conflict or complication. In poetry, I look for tension in the title or first few lines, interesting and/or honest perspective and voice, and a strong sense of sound in the word choice. In non-fiction, I look for humor and compassion.

Blue Mesa Review Poetry and Fiction Contests are Open!

bluemesalit — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:31:27 +0000

Get To Know Issue 25 Managing Editor Bonnie Arning

bluemesalit — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:00:28 +0000

What is your six word memoir?

Six-words-could-never-be-enough

What is the last book you read for pleasure?

The last book I read for pleasure was George R.R. Martian’s Game of Thrones.

What are you doing right now?

Right now I am planing a birthday party for my soon-to-be, two-year-old son Arlo.(It will involve at least one pinata and probably several animals.)

What’s on your ipod rotation currently?

Right now I am listening obsessively(i.e. the same songs over and over for hours) to Holly Conlan and Adele.

What do you primarily read in slush?

When I dive into the slush pile, I read poetry.

What do you look for in a fiction submission?

If I were to read a fiction submission I would look for well crafted prose. Interesting characters and plot are not enough. My enjoyment of a piece depends upon craft at a sentence level.

What do you look for in a poetry submission?

When reading poems for the magazine I am looking for the tri-fecta–image,emotion and form. Alone, none of these elements have enough weight to make me care about a poem. However, when imagery is used to foster the reader’s emotional connection to a poem whose form employs the proper elements of craft, then I fall in love.

What do you look for in a nonfiction submission?

When looking at nonfiction submissions I read for relevance. The story must strike me as important–which is not to say that it must stick to topics of intense brevity, death or natural disaster. What I mean is that the story, no matter how big or small, must have a reason for its telling.

Meet Issue 25 Copy Editor Nick DePascal

bluemesalit — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:11 +0000

What is your 6 word memoir?

Making good metaphors means recognizing likeness.

What was the last book you read for pleasure?

A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin.

What are you up to now?
Working on a new poem, revising 3 or 4 old ones and reading Italo Calvino.

What playlist is queued in your ipod right now?
Don’t have an iPod, but I’ve been listening to The Rosebuds, St. Vincent and Panda Bear pretty religiously lately.

What genres do you read in slush?
Poetry and the occasional review

What do you look for in a fiction submission?
I don’t typically read fiction submissions, however the fiction I enjoy reading always has clear, concise and purposeful dialogue and the ability to transcend it’s plot and transport me to its world.

What do you look for in a poetry submission?
Fresh and intense images, a clear feeling of what’s at stake in the poem, interesting and thoughtful line breaks and an original consideration of white space and the way the poem physically occupies the page.

What do you look for in a nonfiction submission?
Again, I typically don’t read nonfiction submissions, but the nonfiction I enjoy either presents a well-researched and interesting topic that’s new to me, or spins an old, tired topic in a startlingly original way, and has a clear and exciting voice.

BMR Now Offering Expedited Readings! For $3 Fee

bluemesalit — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:39:38 +0000

Blue Mesa Review is now offering a quick 30 day turn around on your work for a small fee of $3. This guarantees a response from a BMR editor within 30 days or less specifying if you’re being kicked up to discussion, or if we’re passing on your work.

If you’re anxious for news, this might be the way to go! Either way Submit, Submit, Submit!

SUBMIT HERE

Issue 24 Pushcart Nominations 2011

bluemesalit — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 03:53:10 +0000

Blue Mesa Review Issue 24 Pushcart Nominations 2011

It’s that time of year again! Drum roll please!

Our Issue 23 editors have chosen

Fiction: ”www.beingasheep.wordpress.com” by Chris Smith

Poetry: “Being Original” by Ricardo Pau-Llosa

Nonfiction: “Dual Diagnosis” by Peter Stenson

Good Luck to our nominees!

Best,

BMR Staff & Editors

Announcing Blue Mesa’s 2012 Poetry and Fiction Contest Judges

bluemesalit — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:20:41 +0000

The gates are open on our 2012 fiction and poetry contest!

2012 Poetry Contest Judge Dana Levin

Poet Dana Levin grew up in California’s Mojave Desert and earned a BA from Pitzer College and an MA from New York University.

Levin’s collections of poetry include In the Surgical Theatre (1999) and Wedding Day (2005) and her third, Sky Burial, in (2011.) Selecting Levin’s manuscript for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, Louise Glück praised the work as “sensuous, compassionate, violent, extravagant.” In the Surgical Theatre also won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares, the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Osterweil Award.

Levin’s free-verse, image-driven poems grapple with the legacies of both Confessionalism and Language poetry by engaging and questioning the self, while using line breaks, punctuation, and syntax as primarily sound-driven tools. In a 2008 interview with the Kenyon Review, Levin noted, “[F]or me, imagination is a transpersonal force. Its products can come unbidden; when asked to be employed it is not tame, but surprises, frustrates, stuns, and confounds.”

Levin’s honors include awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation. Her work has been widely anthologized and has won several Pushcart Prizes.

She lives in Santa Fe and teaches at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and Warren Wilson College.

2012 poetry contest guidelines:

All unpublished poetry manuscripts of 5 poems maximum will be considered.
The winner will receive $750 and publication in Blue Mesa Review Issue 25, and two copies of issue 25.
Please submit and pay $17 online to our new online submission manager
ENTRY DEADLINE: BY DECEMBER 31st, 2011
Submit here

2012 Fiction Contest Judge Kate Braverman

Kate Braverman is a poet and experimental writer of a singular and ruthless breed. She is author of four books of poetry, the novels: Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, Wonders of the West, and The Incantation of Frida K. Her Graywolf Prize for Creative Non-Fiction award winning memoir, Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir was published in Feb. 2006.

Kate’s works have been translated to Italian, Turkish, Latvian, Japanese, French and German. Kate’s short stories and poems are widely anthologized. “Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta” appears in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Kate’s short-story “Mrs. Jordan’s Summer Vacation” won Editor’s Choice Raymond Carver Award. She received a Pushcart Prize for her short story, “Cocktail Hour. Other awards include the 2005 Mississippi Review Prize, a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Fellowship for lifetime recognition of achievement. Most Recently Kate has won the Margie J. Wilson Poetry Prize from Margie Review.

Kate has also received a Recongition Award from the California Legislature Assembly, and a San Francisco Public Library Honoree. Her certificate reads: “For your success as an influential novelist, short story writer, and poet, and for your literary acheivements that have garnered great acclaim, numerous awards and a Pushcart Prize, thereby making California a better place to live.”

Kate lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. All the rumors are true.

Fiction Contest Guidelines:

1st Prize = PUBLICATION in issue 25, $1,000, and 2 copies of issue 25
Runners up will receive an honorable mention and a chance at publication.
Entry Fee: $17
Requirements: Original, unpublished fiction, 7000 words or less.
ENTRY DEADLINE: BY DECEMBER 31st 2011
Submit to our online submission manager

What’s New?!

bluemesalit — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:09:58 +0000

Artist Travis Bruce Black excited about Issue 24!

Thanks for your patience, we’ve been swamped with so many changes, and busy trying to pull Issue 24 into the last stages of production! So here’s a few things we’d like to update you on!

Issue 24 Status!?

We’re back from the printers, and ready for purchase! Please go directly through our distributors UNM PRESS to purchase your issue. ISSUE 24 IS HERE!

Issue 24 Release Party! This Friday April 15th! Join us!

Check out our publicity in The Alibi where Alibi Editor Summer Olsson speaks to Editor Suzanne Richardson about Issue 24!

Worship Issue 24 With Us on April 15th @ the Normal Gallery!

Blue Mesa is Going Green

burqueboy — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:59:27 +0000

Now that our online submission manager is up and running, we are no longer accepting paper submissions. We like words on a real, tangible page just as much as the next guys, but dealing with paper manuscripts is cumbersome, while the record-keeping is time-consuming and tedious. And then, on top of that, we really like trees.

So, if you’ve sent us a paper manuscript that arrived in our office by March 1st, it will be logged, read and considered following our usual procedure. After that, we ask that all submissions be sent via our online submissions manager by clicking here.