The late release of our June 2011 issue has been published. Featuring works of poetry and fiction by: Amanda England, Andre Farant, Andrea Pakieser, Arwen Brenneman, Brita Thielen, Cheri Ause, Ed Gutierrez, Irena Pasvinter, Kevin Heaton, Laura Durnell, Margaret Karmazin, Max Keanu, Michael Royce, Nathan Hunt, Nick Pasotti, Peter McMillan, Rebecca Restrepo, Robert Petras, and Scott Lucas.

Read it for free by visiting the Magazines link. Congratulations to all the authors.

The poetry of Bruce J. Berger has been published previously in Midwest Literary Magazine. See “To the Wooded Way” in the January 2011 edition of MLM. Also a short story writer, his fiction can be found in a variety of print and on-line journals, and most recently his story “Back to the Front” appears in Black Magnolias Literary Journal. He has also started to publish stories himself in the Kindle store.

Run, Rain

Run, rain, behind you lurks the
Sun, a day too late

Now, the wet and wet you are but
How you know is beyond

My scope of understanding
My life my blood

You make it sad to kiss
You rude and chilly beast.

We are very close to being caught up. June and July will both be out next week and by the end of the month the next anthology will be printed. We are taking submissions for August now.

We are working over the weekend to sort out a group of awards we will be giving select authors throughout the month.

Thank you all for your patience as we get back on track. We fell behind in the April issue and we have been working feverishly to read everything and get back on the proper schedule.

The software was updated and is working well. This results in better communication, eliminates the chance of error due to lost email, and will assist us in keeping the time-line for future issues. We asked our software vendor for the changes in the submission manager and in the support system. We did this in response to a bit of criticism. Both solutions are working well. We appreciate your comments and patience. MLM is always working to improve. Thank you for your continued support. Keep those submissions coming in!

Our newest anthology, Soft Corners, is now available for purchase.

Featuring: Andrew McCallum Crawford, Angelica Gomez, Anton Frost, Ben Chronister, Brandon Roy, David Stockdale, Dixon Hearne, Doug Thornton, Eileen Neary, James Dye, Jeffrey Haynes, Jessie Peacock, Jim Davis, Jim Meirose, Joan Colby, Joe Ponepinto, John Hilario, John Tzikas, Joshua Berida, Kevin Heaton, Kimberly Cockroft, Kristina Dallmann, Kurt Jensen, Larry Anderson, Len Joy, Max Keanu, Megan Kirby, Nick Pasotti, Pete Bush, Rick Nordgren, Samuel Snoek-Brown, Scott Alexander Jones, Shawn Ann Murray, Suzanne Roberts, Talia Carner, Terence Kuch, Wesley Gray, Winile Nzalo,
Zoe Karakikla-Mitsakou

Please note: If you are an author whose work appears in this edition, and you plan to obtain a copy, please contact us for a contributor coupon.

Our new anthology “Soft Corners” will be released this week. Featuring works by: Andrew McCallum Crawford, Angelica Gomez, Anton Frost, Ben Chronister, Brandon Roy, David Stockdale, Dixon Hearne, Doug Thornton, Eileen Neary, James Dye, Jeffrey Haynes, Jessie Peacock, Jim Davis, Jim Meirose, Joan Colby, Joe Ponepinto, John Hilario, John Tzikas, Joshua Berida, Kevin Heaton, Kimberly Cockroft, Kristina Dallmann, Kurt Jensen, Larry Anderson, Len Joy, Max Keanu, Megan Kirby, Nick Pasotti, Pete Bush, Rick Nordgren, Samuel Snoek-Brown, Scott Alexander Jones, Shawn Ann Murray, Suzanne Roberts, Talia Carner, Terence Kuch, Wesley Gray, Winile Nzalo, and Zoe Karakikla-Mitsakou.

The May 2011 Issue is now available online. (Free of course)

Just click the link to “Magazines”

We would never change our guidelines without notifying our authors. Please note these changes.

One of our readers called it to our attention that our submission guidelines seem too broad. We agree, so we made these changes today.

The old guideline read: “By submitting to MLM, you grant permission for MLM to publish your submission electronically, in print or through affiliated anthologies; now and in the future.”

We changed that to read: “By submitting to MLM you are granting permission for MLM to publish your submission electronically and in an anthology.”

Two authors complained the email system delivered their acceptance letter after the work appeared in print. The odd thing is the email was dated properly, but showed up late. We are doing our best to find out how or why that happened, or even if it is within our control. Writers have always been able to log in and view the status of their submissions anytime. Until we discover what the email glitch was that affected a couple writers, we are adding this text to the guidelines to help make writers aware: “Generally our email notification system works well, however, occasionally our automatic notifications are mistaken as spam, or may be inexplicably delayed etc. For this reason, it is your responsibility to log in and check on the status of your submission.”

We apologized to the two authors who pointed out the error. We cannot go backward in time but we can strive to improve. We appreciate the feedback from writers who help us learn how we can do better. We do listen and every effort is made to please every writer possible.

We expect to have a position for an editor (not the masthead) opening up soon. More details will be sent to select applicants. This is a paid position.

For more information, see: http://midwestliterarymagazine.com/contact-us/jobs/

A beautiful collection of contemporary poetry written by Kevin Heaton, edited by Anthony Shields, published by Midwest Literary Magazine with a forward by Doug Whiteman. Kevin Heaton demonstrates superb poetic style with a confident voice. Nature is attended to throughout this book in ways that are both new and surprising. The language is insightful and musical. The poet is ever-present, just behind the scenes, employing an unstrained style that is a pleasure to read. This is a collection you will read again and again.

Some of you may notice the recent updates to the website today (03/12).

We removed the Google adwords advertising as well as the donation link using PayPal.

While advertising with Google, we don’t have any control over the links Google puts on our pages. We are concerned that an ad might appear which directs our writers to unethical publishing sites etc. We would rather lose the revenue than take a chance on that happening. We recently polled the writers and asked for advice on how we could improve. This was one of the suggestions. We have to agree, so we removed the ads. MLM is now an ad-free website.

We also removed the donation button. The decision was made not to solicit donations at this time, at least not unless we change to a not-for-profit format. It might confuse donors who want to contribute but then discover they cannot write it off on their taxes. As much as we have enjoyed the donations, it’s very important to be sure nobody is unhappy or mislead by the word “donation.”

For these reasons, these two changes were made today.