SWING magazine

A new @swing.lit is here and is, as ever, of the people, by the people, for the people. 👉 Link to pre-order, topmost in bio. 👈 Inspiration to order from SWING Editor-in-Chief, @leighannecouch (as if the cover art by the inimitable @wiresandfires is not enough—) "What I love about this issue is its movement toward peace, which requires an acceptance of loss, a folding into joy the inevitability of pain. Every single piece in this compendium tackles the utter mystery of human nature—our meanness, weakness, and inconsistency; our incredible vision, resilience, and capacity for joy and sacrifice—through stories, poems, and comics about aging, addiction, abuse, fame, power, identity, and making art." 🌅 "This first issue of our third volume presents new stories by Tony Earley and David James Poissant, as well as the three 2025 Porch Prize Winners: Eli C. Harvey @eliharvey_writer in Fiction (selected by Maurice Carlos Ruffin @mauriceruffin ); Aaron Herschel Shapiro in Poetry (selected by Cecily Parks @cecilycecilyparks ); and Beth Kephart @bethkephartnow in Creative Nonfiction (selected by John T. Edge @johntedge )—and more comics than ever before, with a few gems from a master under the nom de plume Ampydoo, as well as a short series by a recent graduate from Belmont University, who studied with our designer Rachel Briggs (@wiresandfires )." 🌅 "All of our hand-drawn covers reflect the gathering of voices inside, in feel and substance. There's some turbulence in motion outside this cozy and rather traditional home; it is unclear whether the time is dawn or dusk, and the viewer's perspective is from a hidden place through the foliage, as if we've stumbled upon a secret family. We hope reading SWING feels like a personal discovery, one that you can't help but share." 🌅 (Pre-order now, top link in bio.) . . . #swingmagazine #litmag #literarymagazine #independentprint #indielit #printlit #porchwriters

🧨 BIG NEWS!!! 🧨 SWING is @clmporg ’s 2024 Firecracker Award Winner for Best Debut Magazine! 🎉🥳🍾 The judges say that “SWING has made a bold outing as a journal that gathers evocative, fine-tuned writing from the South and beyond. The debut issue is characterized by musical, deftly-formed poems, stories that conjure rich psychological and physical landscapes, and essays that embrace contradiction and irresolution. The editors’ thoughtful, and sometimes sly, juxtapositions of pieces made the journal a delight to read, and one where questions of place, family, change, and uncertainty ripple through its pages. The journal drew us in with the clear and crisp design of its print volume and website, as well as its welcoming tone and ethos. SWING is a journal to read from front to back, and a testament to the literary community that its publisher, The Porch, has built in Nashville for years.” Thank you, judges, CLMP, @porchtn and its board, the Sandra Schatten Foundation, SWING’s advisory board, and everyone who has rallied around and read our first issue. Issue 2 is out now, and we’ll celebrate on July 12 with a reading at @temponashville . We are OPEN for subs for Issue 3, coming this fall.

Some news: SWING is open NOW for black and white COMICS through May 17, 2026. "Submit to SWING" link in bio.

Come to downtown Sewanee on April 24-25 for the second annual SEWANEE IN PRINT, a celebration of print culture on the Cumberland Plateau and beyond, featuring author readings from the Sewanee Review, SWING, and the book series, Sewanee Poetry, as well as a panel on magazine design, an open mic, receptions galore, and the Zine & Small Press Book Fest.

Chelsea Whitton will be reading at American Legion Hall at 5:00 pm on April 25th, 2026 as part of Sewanee in Print. They can be found on Instagram at @po_whitt . Chelsea Whitton is the author of Bear Trap (Dancing Girl Press, 2018) and Wonder Wheel, published by LSU Press in March of this year. She holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Poetry from The New School. Her poetry and prose have appeared in many of print and online publications, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Cream City Review, Poetry Ireland, The Atlanta Review, and Forklift-Ohio. Her work has been a finalist for the Gearhart Prize, and the Frost Place and Adrienne Richard awards for poetry. She is the recipient of the 2018 Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize. Raised in the Carolinas, she spent her twenties in New York and now lives in Southwestern Ohio, where she teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Chelsea Whitton’s debut poetry collection, Wonder Wheel, dexterously whirls in sonic circles, ruminating on themes of spiritual bestowal and terrestrial bequest, millennial identity, adult friendship, feminine desire, and the mythmaking at stake in family history. Disoriented speakers who nevertheless believe they know where they are going, and what they are doing, provide an occasion for lyric expansiveness and periodic bathos, including elegies for June Carter Cash, Patsy Cline, the author’s father, an ex-cat, and others. At the heart of the collection is a rhyming sonnet crown that offers a wicked inversion of the book’s larger vision by constructing an apocalyptic mythology of matrilineal inheritance reliant on resistance, destruction, and martyrdom as much as on cycles of creation and healing. Jason Schneiderman, author of Nothingism: Poetry at the End of Print Culture, on Wonder Wheel: “Whitton’s voice is virtuosic, knocking off poetic forms with a seemingly effortless bravado, while also slipping into the confessional intimacy of a late night on Brooklyn bar stools sharing clove cigarettes. This is a stunning debut that is profoundly joyful and deeply serious.”

Johnathan will be reading at American Legion Hall at 5:00 pm on April 25th, 2026 as part of Sewanee in Print. Jonathan Farmer is the author of two books: Lyndon Johnson: A Poem, which will come out next spring, and That Peculiar Affirmative: On the Social Life of Poems. He teaches high school English and lives in Durham, NC. "Lyndon Johnson" centers on the five-plus years of Johnson’s presidency, a tumultuous time in which the promise of progressive social programs and basic human rights was countered by a war that killed millions of people and devastated the lives of countless more. As Johnson tried to pull the United States closer to some of its professed ideals, the country saw the further erosion of institutions, the contradictions of which we are still feeling to this day. Throughout this brilliantly researched work, Jonathan Farmer implicates himself and the reader, questioning what it means to belong in America today, coming from places of privilege, and carrying the great historical inheritance of violence. We see Farmer reflecting on his own upbringing, his relationship with his father, and subsequently the era which the book examines. Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of Rocket Fantastic & Apocalyptic Swing, on “Lyndon Johnson”: “I mean, this book is WILD. I could not stop shaking my head and smiling as I read it. I am overwhelmed by the sheer formal stamina of this poem/story/historical re-imagining (but also the research, the sheer magnitude of the knowledge here is stunning) of a story and a figure we thought we knew.

Troy Coll will be reading at American Legion Hall at 3:30 pm on April 25th, 2026 as part of Sewanee in Print. He can be found on Instagram @tacohole Troy Coll is a poet, software engineer, and unrepentant jaywalker based in East Nashville. Born in New Orleans and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he's lived multiple lives as a forklift driver, bartender, and produce packer. His work has been published in SWING Magazine, and his poem “wild tomatoes” won first place in the 2025 Tomato Art Fest poetry competition. Come to downtown Sewanee on April 24-25 for the second annual SEWANEE IN PRINT, a celebration of print culture on the Cumberland Plateau and beyond, featuring author readings from the Sewanee Review, SWING, and the book series, Sewanee Poetry, as well as a panel on magazine design, an open mic, receptions galore, and the Zine & Small Press Book Fest.

Kelsey D. Mahaffey will be reading at American Legion Hall at 3:30 pm on April 25th, 2026 as part of Sewanee in Print. They can be found on Instagram @bearfootwalker . Kelsey D. Mahaffey is a certified listener poet with The Good Listening Project. Poetry pulled her from a dark corner, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. Her work can be seen in: Pinch, Deep South Magazine, SWING, Arkansas Review, Pensive: A Global Journal for Spirituality & the Arts, The Sunlight Press, Halfway Down the Stairs, Cumberland River Review, Rat’s Ass Review, and Eunoia Review, among others. Her debut chapbook, No Fault of Water, was a semi-finalist for the 2024 New Women’s Voices competition from Finishing Line Press. She and her family live in Nashville, TN with the ghost of a bow-legged cat. When she’s not writing, you can find her barefoot on the back trails of her favorite park. Come to downtown Sewanee on April 24-25 for the second annual SEWANEE IN PRINT, a celebration of print culture on the Cumberland Plateau and beyond, featuring author readings from the Sewanee Review, SWING, and the book series, Sewanee Poetry, as well as a panel on magazine design, an open mic, receptions galore, and the Zine & Small Press Book Fest.

Ankita Chatterjee will be reading at American Legion Hall at 3:30 pm on April 25th, 2026 as part of Sewanee in Print. They can be found on Instagram @anchatte . Ankita Chatterjee’s work has appeared in SWING, Barren Magazine, and Anti-Heroin Chic. She was a part of Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writers Lab in 2022. She was born in Iowa, grew up in California, and now lives in Nashville, where she is currently a medical student at Vanderbilt University. Come to downtown Sewanee on April 24-25 for the second annual SEWANEE IN PRINT, a celebration of print culture on the Cumberland Plateau and beyond, featuring author readings from the Sewanee Review, SWING, and the book series, Sewanee Poetry, as well as a panel on magazine design, an open mic, receptions galore, and the Zine & Small Press Book Fest.

Come to downtown Sewanee on April 24-25 for the second annual SEWANEE IN PRINT, a celebration of print culture on the Cumberland Plateau and beyond, featuring author readings from the Sewanee Review, SWING, and the book series, Sewanee Poetry, as well as a panel on magazine design, an open mic, receptions galore, and the Zine & Small Press Book Fest. Events will be held at the University Bookstore, the American Legion Hall, and Angel Park. If you are interested in displaying or selling your zines or your small press book, please get in touch with Leigh Anne Couch at [email protected]

The second annual Sewanee In Print is on its way and with it the Zine and Small Press Book Fest in Angel Park on April 25th! Have any zines, comic art, handmade books, etc. you'd like to share? DM SWING! We have quite a bit cooking for Sewanee In Print 2026, so stay tuned to see what literary excitement is on its way!

Sketches by poet and artist Rick Hilles @rh11219 ! From last night's incredible launch of SWING (volume 3, no. 1) at Vanderbilt Special Collections library. Archivist Mary Somerville McSparran opened the evening speaking eloquently about the present moment and literature and the human hand. After I gave a goofy survey (see the longhand) of lit mags in America, we enjoyed readings from Lisa Kathryn Perry @lisadreamswords , Troy Coll @tacohole , and the inimitable Tony Earley!