Free State Review is a literary journal that comes out four times every three years.
Want to know what we’re into? Peruse our site and/or order a copy, then hit us up!
Free State Review is a literary journal that comes out four times every three years.
Want to know what we’re into? Peruse our site and/or order a copy, then hit us up!
New and Forthcoming!
Our New Authors
chosen from our Summer 2022 reading period
Sam Schmidt, Dark Bird, a collection of poems about a tree.
Andy Bieman, Brocken Spectre, a novella about Zyg, a field recording hobbyist who has been trying to record two footsteps that never seem to turn out right.
Camille Newsome, The Suffering and Scrumptious World, a chapbook of poems exploring themes of farm work, long road trips, and community living.
Clayton Clark, Auscultate, a collection of poems which investigate the body in many of its forms: humans and animals, plants and fungi, bodies of water, bodies of knowledge, bodies of art, and even bodies of bodies.
J.A Bernstein, Afterlight, a memoir of an Israeli soldier unable to prevent his political irony from becoming his personal crisis.
Special mention goes to these writers whose works also sang to us —
Chloe Chung Seim, Churn (stories)
Michael Giddings, Pet Talk (stories)
Fred Dale, Geometric Matters (poems)
Laton Carter, The Woman with a Window Where Her Heart Should Be (poems)
John Mauk, The Hooligan Present (stories)
Daniel Adler, Here I Am Today (Novel)
Ceridwen Hall, Acoustic Shadows (poems)
Joanna Acevedo, They Were Beautiful Years Too (stories)
Monica Viera, Untethered in New Orleans (poems)
“Blood Histories functions, in part, as an experiment in confession, interrogating how we are educated and educate others into and out of existence … There are lines in this collection that no one has written before—that, perhaps, no one has ever even thought but has only felt.”
– Brenna Womer, author of honeypot
The Bubbler

Evelyn Berry Reviews “ORCHID ALPHA” by Kimberly Ann Southwick
ORCHID ALPHA, by Kimberly Ann Southwick (2023, Trembling Pillow Press, New Orleans, LA, 101 pages, $16.99, 978-1-7374768-1-8) Reviewed by Evelyn Berry Orchid Alpha Dares...

Laura Villareal Reviews Wendy Guerra’s “Delicates,” translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson and Esperanza Hope Snyder
72 pages | ISBN-13: 978-1803091662 | Seagull Books | Publication Date: June 2023 Many idioms are untranslatable from language to language. “Don't air our dirty laundry” or “La...
Latest Issue
Gavin Bourke, Oisin Breen, Casey Bush, Henry Cherry, Jeff Corey, Barbara Daniels, Jessica Lynn Dotson, S. Preston Duncan, Nathan Erwin, Craig Evenson, Bruce Jacobs, Juleen Eun Sun Johnson, Sandra Kolankiewicz, Sheleen McElhinney, Tim Moder, Eric Pankey, Sage Ravenwood, Matthew Raymond, Greg Sendi, D.E. Steward, Jocelyn Ulevicus, Rob Vance, Loren Walker
How to Read Our Journal
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Free State Review is published in print every 8 months.
We are looking for poetry, fiction, personal essay, and one-minute plays. No more oyster poems, please.
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