Put out by Southern New Hampshire University, this annual literary journal strives to reach the typical, and atypical, readers of lit journals. I read the Spring 2007 issue.

The journal is perfect bound with black and white photos on the cover and interior.  The body text was readable, had a good white space ratio, and I didn’t catch any typos. Visually, this is an appealing journal. My only complaint is the TOC looks cramped. They jammed it onto two pages, which looks odd since the second page of the TOC is facing a blank page.

One story I really enjoyed was “Deception” by Dolorus de Leon. A grandmother bored with Heaven tries to make sense of the one-word counsel given by an angel. This is probably the best written of the issue, and the most original.

Most of the other stories were decent, but one of the authors gave a supporting character the same name as one of the main characters. I beg all writers: please don’t do that unless you have a good reason for it. It’s confusing, even if the minor character is only mentioned a time or two.

Amoskeag also features the winning stories of their contests for high school and university students. The high school story read more like creative non-fiction, but it had nice imagery and tied together well. The stories from the university students were better than some of the others in the issue. It’s always interesting to see the difference between contest winners and other stories published in the same issue.

Overall, about equal space is given to poems and stories, with 8 photographs included. The stories tended to be on the shorter side, with about half of them being flash-fiction, and literary in tone and plot. While the stories were good, “Deception” is the only one I can still remember.

To look at it yourself, contact editor Allison Cummings at Amoskeag, 2500 N. River Road, Manchester NH 03106.