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.

Whenever I have a magazine or journal fill out the NSSWM questionnaire, I also ask them to send me a sample issue. I’ve been getting a lot of them recently, and I’ve really been enjoying seeing the wide variety of publications out there. For example, last week I received a magazine called Watermen that has a poem about a Halibut.

Since I’m reading these publications, I thought I’d sporadically give you my impressions of them.

First up, Withersin wins points for best presentation. They sent me the second issue of the magazine, submission guidelines and some bookmarks in a folder. Snazzy, without being a bribe. Plus I like their business card.

From a layout perspective they did a good job. The cover is interesting, the text isn’t too small or crowded together, and the white space ratio is appealing. However, I’m not sure how I feel about the lack of page numbers on the title page, and they use an italic font that is a little hard to read. In one of the stories they seemed to use ? instead of – which got confusing, but for a second issue that’s a pretty minor technical glitch.

On to the content!  They have a mix of did-you-know type articles, book reviews, film reviews (old ones), interviews and stories. The magazine starts with an article about cannibalism. I can’t decide if author Ebien Piestar is joking or not. The eclectic bits of true-life weirdness are fun to read, and I have a hard deciding if some of the items are fiction or nonfiction.

Okay, I’m impressed. They wrangled an interview with Neil Gaiman. It’s a flippant interview where the interviewer talks more than Gaiman does, but it’s interesting, as long as you don’t want much in the way of concrete details.

The mix of the journal is mostly the small weird bits with 2-4 short stories thrown in, with illustrations to go along with every story. The stories are of good quality, and don’t tend to excessive blood and guts, but they still gave me the shivers.

Overall, I’d say Withersin lives up to its subtitle: Dark, different; the pleasantly sinister.