Explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs. Grab a copy of our Readers Manifesto! I'm Steve Chisnell, an educator for 35 years and an aggressive reader for 50---Let's read and write together and I'll let you in on a few things I've discovered and am still learning!
On November, Nature, and Newfangled Lit
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1 Nov 2026 Reader, LitMags R UsThat late September #LitMag Week thing has really been eating at me. And, after all, if I'm recommending that we all read more of these, I should at least commit myself to the call. And when I look at my monthly TBR list, it usually includes a graphic novel, a book of poetry, something related to my annual theme, something related to that month's celebrated (i.e. Irish-Americans, Hispanic, LGBTQIA+, etc.) and then a smattering of fiction and nonfiction (along with the Nomads research). Let's get a journal or literary magazine in there! So I think I will. And here is how I'll do it. Pay attention, because it involves you! Starting in December (because November is here and January seems too cute), I will read a different literary journal each month and then review it in a more significant way than the Ledger I've been doing for other books. I will likely note that review in this newsletter, as well. Unlike the ledger, I will give it some kind of rating (though I already know that this rating will be somewhat peculiar to the mag, not only highly subjective but not at all uniform). THEN, I'll offer all of you a chance to throw your name in for my copy of the journal (which may or may not have my marginalia). Then I'll mail it to you! Ta-dah! You have something fairly unique to read! (And if you're really cool, you'll keep passing it on. . . .) Maybe we'll just wind up supporting some overworked editors and seeing some writers who need more people's eyes on their stuff. That's what this is about. I've already got a small pile of them around here that I've always "been meaning to" get to, enough for six months or more. But I'd be happy to take your suggestions of favorites (or intriguing ones) that you'd like me to look over. More, if you are connected to one of these small press wonders, feel free to selfishly declare yourself a candidate! But the "drawing" will be monthly and also require monthly entry. (You may not want every one I read, and more, your enthusiasm to type your name in a quick form month to month is a small cost for the potential win.) Who knows? Maybe we'll discover some under-represented talents out there (we certainly should). Maybe we'll find places we'd like to send our own stuff. Maybe we'll just wind up supporting some overworked editors and seeing some writers who need more people's eyes on their stuff. That's what this is about. If you join me in the reading of literary journals, however infrequent, I'd be happy to support, post, repost, and otherwise market your review. But let's create a TBR list of mags, too, while we're at it. I'll be making a spreadsheet, I think, to record key points of each journal, which we can all access. I'm not trying to take the place of Chill Subs or Submittable; not at all. I'm making a humble list of literary magazines as a tool for busy readers wanting to dip in and looking for places to start. So yup. Send me your ideas for magazines I simply have to check out! Let's get this started. If it starts to build into something really valuable, I'll make a version of it available on the website, as well. For now, though, just between us!
“Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." Don Marquis in O Rare Don Marquis, Edward Anthony Literary Nomads: Hay-on-WyeHow many "book towns" can you name? I'm not talking about places that just have your favorite book store, but ones that have built their identities around the book, as Bill Clinton once described, as a "Woodstock of the mind"? Redu, Belgium? Brownville, Nebraska? Jimbōchō Book Town, Japan? Cargill, Ontario? Certainly if you know any, it may well be Hay-on-Wye in Wales. You may even know its infamous 1977 claim by resident Richard Booth that it would henceforth be an "independent kingdom" for books (and he, of course, would rule). Say what you will, but ever after the Kingdom of Hay-on-Wye has made itself a place of pilgrimage for book lovers around the world. How many bookshops can you imagine this town of fewer than 2000 people handle? Did you answer more than 20? And how? While the "Kingdom's" story is interesting, less known is its significant connection to one of the most ancient of book cities, Timbuktu. The cities are linked, but they could not be more different in the nature of their book reverence or the reasons we visit. Our next episode takes us to ancient spaces and contemporary African politics, the desperate acts of believers in the book, and even an ancient argument against AI. (Oh, and Derrida--Jacques Derrida--I mean, isn't it always cool when you can fit Derrida in?)
Calendar: Chill in the AirThe November breather before another holiday season!
*NaNoWriMo was a non-profit from 1999-2025 that disbanded after several controversies (AI positions, community moderators, and finances--DuckDuckGo that for more). But the tradition continues in the broader writing community, and support for writing can be found on https://nano2.org/ . Blackhawk: The ReDiscovery of AmericaThanks to those who have already downloaded the Glossary / Reading Guide for Blackhawk! A reminder that if you have not gotten yours, it's not too late to get that $1 special (but that price ends in about 24 hours)! The complete and thematically-indexed Glossary and Transcript collection is a PDF of 90 pages of terms, cross-referenced to Blackhawk along with quotations and explanations, and indicators of how each term necessarily re-frames the thinking of those only familiar with indigenous cultures. For educators, the glossary serves as an excellent supplement to any discussion of indigenous cultures and literature, whether or not you include Blackhawk in your repertoire. (But you should!)
Book RecommendationNature Poem by Tommy Pico (2017) My second book by this poet and the second time I am including him among my most recommended reads. I wasn't certain that he would top IRL, his long stream-of-consciousness literary rant from a queer NDN, but I think Nature Poem has done exactly that. This is also (technically) a single book-length poem, but in many many parts, each standing (and once published) independently. Collectively, they form a powerful argument, post-structural in their quality: why the speaker hates nature and nature poems, why they cannot be abided unless they are severely refigured. Along the way, we take on broken lovers, overheard conversations in museums, nights in Queens, and a thousand cultural icons. Pico somehow reveals to all of us the indecency of pretending such a poem is a worthy act. This is the second of his Teebs tetralogy, and I will read the next two in the seasons where they "belong," winter and spring. But wow, let yourself be made wholly uncentered--find Pico and brace yourself. "Cold was a curiosity, like rain. A ghost. No. A reanimation, a flourish of calendar art and novels with families in living rooms, huddled in a blizzard's fist.'"
“Hope is a charred skeleton of a house visible from a road that snakes through the valley of memory where fig trees burst from the ground like throaty laughter.”
“How do statues become more galvanizing than refugees
is not something I wd include in a nature poem.”
“What rhymes with, *fuck off and die?*”
Weird Bookers Ahead By the next newsletter, the Booker Prize winners will have been announced (please let it be Marlon James!), but Lexi Covalsen at Cold Magazine notices that this year's selections are, well, weird. She doesn't mean that they are bad at all, just that Booker has once again demonstrated that what we're writing and reading has taken longer steps away from trad fiction. We see the surreal, the experimental, the hybrid, the niche, bizarre, ultra-isolating, harrowing, disorienting. There are few (like Douglas Stuarts John of John) that we might call traditional. Even the generally (IMO) droll and underwhelming Elizabeth Strout breaks out with some politically anxiety-driven structure and meditation over mundane events. By no means would I mark the Booker choices as signaling a new cultural trend. On the other hand, it's as interesting to see what the big writers are working on as it is to see whether we want to read it. (But James; definitely read James.)
How long should I lament the lapse of lavatory? Still, even still, the plumbing debacle continues . . . I think there may be an Ibsen play in here somewhere, but I can't find it. But there's a swath of original writing coming soon, in the meantime. (I could make some inappropriate potty puns here, but will . . . hold them in.) Enjoy the luxuries you have! And for those in the US, vote Tuesday like our critical literacy depends on it. I'll be at the pollbook waiting to record your ballot. Steve What's Still Ahead?
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Waywords Studio
Explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs. Grab a copy of our Readers Manifesto! I'm Steve Chisnell, an educator for 35 years and an aggressive reader for 50---Let's read and write together and I'll let you in on a few things I've discovered and am still learning!