This past week, I sent off issue NDQ 88.1/2 to our publishing partners at the University of Nebraska Press. The issue is balanced a bit more toward prose than the last two which has less to do with the quality of submissions in poetry and more to do with the remarkable fiction and essays that we received.

We have also re-opened poetry and non-fiction for submissions and you can find their respective Submittable forms here. If you like what you see in our table of contents, do consider subscribing to NDQ. If you subscribe today, you’ll receive 88.1/2 in the mail this spring and 88.3/4 in the fall. That’s 700 pages of fiction, essays, art, and poetry each year. As the late-night infomercials have taught me to say, that’s just pennies a day! Less than $.15 a page!!!

But more than that, it helps keep NDQ available as venues for creative writers and engaged readers. As you likely know, these days are particularly challenging for many cultural institutions, publishers, and little magazines. So even if NDQ doesn’t float your boat, If you can, consider buying a book from a small press, subscribing to a literary journal (like our UNP stablemate, Hotel Amerika), or otherwise supporting the arts.

Here’s the table of contents:

Editor’s Note

Pursue:_________
Ryan Stander

Fiction

A Spy in Vienna, Seduced
Kathleen Baum

Kept Company
Sheila Liming

Witness
Katie Edkins Milligan

Eight Men
Anna Maconochie

The Shark
Benjamin Steinhorn

Dynamite
Jayne S. Wilson

Heart on a Wire
Sean Sullivan

Non Fiction

Remembering
Jennifer N. Shannon

Garnett and the Lavender-Lit Room
Debra Monroe

State Lines
Mary Mullen

The Day the Sun Didn’t Rise
Katrin Arefy

Baked Alaska
Coyote Shook

Holy Shit!
Priscilla Long

Poetry

Little Stars and Little Children
Growing Into Myself
Carol Hamilton

Back
Morgan Bazilian

Expecting Spring
Surely, It Must Be True
Sally Dunn

The Hough Riots
Active Shooter
A Life More Abundant
William Heath

“Must I change my triumphant songs?”
Ace Boggess

Virginia Woolf’s Diary: September 10, 1913
Aubade
Mac Campbell

Envious I am of the hermits
Ilhem Issaoui

Woman-Tied Knots, Sichuan, 1986
Serenity Prayer, Old Chapel Cemetery
Mary Alice Dixon

a northern cemetery
Rebecca E. Bender

Dexter
Allen Kenneth Schaidle

The Truth of It
Robert Grunst

Chronoscope 181: And that spot
John Walser

Day 1
As a Child
Diente de Leche
Laine Derr

Holiday
Will Cordeiro

Guestroom
North Country
David R. Solheim

Explaining Extinction to My Son
Brett Ortler

I am your silence
Peter Grandbois

Script for a Deathbed Confession
David Rock

Five Contemporary Dutch Poets
Translated by Arno Bohlmeijer

Saying goodbye at age seven
Judith Herzberg

Glass
Ted van Lieshout

Feast
Paul Demets

Louise
Phebe Rasch

Grown up
Arno Bohlmeijer

Playground
What is More Beautiful Than Winter
Samuel Swauger

Some Light Can Never Be Seen
Brian Clifton

Birth Story
Andrena Zawinski

Echolocation
Andrew Koch

Hunger
James Kangas

Ants
Vlad Tumanov

Dog & Human
Alan Britt

Day of small talk
Mark Danowsky

Snail
Down in Another Country
Roberta Santlofer

Sleepy Whale 470
Terry Brinkman

A Poor Wolf’s Poem
Michael S. Walker

Habitat
M. Nasorri Pavone

For C
Memento
Brandon Krieg

Ibsen
Making balance
Cows and sometimes horses
DS Maolalai

If Mouse Could Slip Her Skin
Barbara Saunier

The End of the World Cookbook
Kurt Olsson

“How the Body Can Be a Sky to Hold the Stars”
Jose Luis Oseguera

Caves, Whether Sacred or Profane,
Nick Conrad

Deliverance
Body
Masha Ko and Adam Kravitz

“About Suffering They Were Never Wrong”
David Keplinger

Online Auction
Changing Weather
Christina E. Petrides

Wind
After
Peter Vertacnik

Polyurethane Covid
George Stratigakis

from the wright brothers to icarus: a history of aviation
an ode to the social distance skating club
Jona L. Pedersen

Space Cadet 1
Waking from the American Dream
Mindfulness Over Matters
Rich Murphy

Misquoting Churchill
Andrew Johnson

First Rod
Iain Twiddy

Interregnum
Lauro Palomba

My Father’s Paranoid from Various Angles
Nnadi Samuel

Taking Mom to See the Pope
Jake Sheff

Cigarette
Carol Ellis

The Windows Are Too Wide at Starbucks
Ilan Mochari

Happenstance
Leslie Schultz

A Full Decade
John Tustin

i rituals
dystopia à la carte
Evan Anders

Prayer
Bridgebuilding
A. Molotkov

Much Ado about a Dawn That Dimmed
Ndaba Sibanda

In the Hiccup of Their Yelling
John McCarthy

Exit Interview
Michael Milligan

Any adequate delusion
Forever has a way
After a Lotus birth the life cord
Richard Weaver

Chronicle
Sanjeev Sethi

88.1/2