Listen up all you Chandler aficionados, noir novelists, and dark lyricists, there’s a new literary magazine in town (inasmuch as an online periodical can be “in town”), and they are soliciting material for their next issue on noir LA.

Chaparral, which will focus on work from and/or about Southern California, was just announced last week. This inaugural issue features poetry by Amy Gerstler, Douglas Kearney, Dorothy Barresi, Victoria Chang and more. Chaparral will be collaborating with Street Poets for a benefit reading in late May or early June. (Check the Chaparral website for details.)

Following the break is the announcement I got about the upcoming issue:

We’ll now begin reading and soliciting work for the upcoming summer noir issue. We’re looking for anything from typical hard-boiled crime narratives to lyric poems filled with crow imagery to matters of skin color to chiaroscuro in art. If you are a writer who is not living and writing in Southern California, send us work that takes place in or imagines LA. Please note: though the inaugural issue of Chaparral features only poetry, we’ll be including both fiction and non-fiction in this next issue. Deadline May 20th.  submissions@chaparralpoetry.net

Full disclosure: Chaparral is edited by a friend of mine and another friend of mine is on the advisory board for Street Poets. Try not to hold that against them.