Don't, Don't You Want Lit Mags?
New NEA guidelines; submission-fees insights & stats; editor interviews; advice on "breaking in;" thoughts on genre; reviews of Hawai'i lit mags; Orca closes; and more
Welcome to our bi-weekly news roundup!
Greetings Lit Magquariuses,
There’s lots to cover this week. So, buckle up and hold on tight!
As we discussed over the weekend, the National Endowment for the Arts has updated its guidelines for arts-organization grants for the coming fiscal year. Today it came to my attention that other features of the grant application have also changed.
In fact, by looking at the Wayback Machine, I was able to discern that the NEA’s Legal Requirements and Assurance of Compliance page has been changed five times since January 25th. This isn’t necessarily significant, but it does perhaps indicate some bumpy processes and uncertainty behind the scenes.
What we do know is that the site’s new requirements and assurance of compliance now state:
[T]he applicant agrees that, if the applicant is selected and becomes a NEA grant recipient:
The applicant will comply with all applicable Executive Orders while the award is being administered. Executive orders are posted at whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions.
The applicant’s compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the U.S. Government’s payment decisions…pursuant to Executive Order No. 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, dated January 21, 2025.
The applicant will not operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws, in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.
The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.
As I mentioned in my last post, I find some of this language vague. What does it mean to “comply with all applicable Executive Orders while the award is being administered”? How will this be overseen?
I also do not know if this particular grant is one for which lit mag editors typically apply. If these changes will affect your journal, please let us know.
(I thank all of you in advance for keeping discussion of these sensitive issues respectful and civil.)
In other news, several thoughtful and important takes on submission fees caught my eye.
At ONE ART Editor Mark Danowsky’s Substack
, Marc Alan Di Martino has posted Submission Fees and Their Discontents. Says Di Martino,It requires a great deal of work to run a literary journal, and it is work for which we should all be grateful. But is the work and dedication of editors and publishers any greater than that of writers? We all hold down day jobs and have families, yet somehow find time to get the work done. Most or all of the work of writing is done without pay...On top of this, we are increasingly being asked to pay to have our work considered by journals which, in many cases, don’t offer compensation beyond publication itself.
…There must be a way to keep the playing field level while ensuring that journals are sustainable.
At the
, Emily Stoddard argues, “There’s probably no more overt or practical place for a press to show their values at work than in their submissions process. It’s the door into a relationship with them. It’s the way they let people come to their table, or not.”To that end, she shares some troubling stats:
In 2025, almost 60% of reading periods for first books exclude poets who can’t afford to pay.
…Some…publishers just received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts here in the United States. I find it useful to notice which publishers are receiving federal funds, CLMP grants, and other resources while continuing to charge high submission fees with no fee waivers.
…In 2025, the average fee among just first book reading periods is $26—one dollar higher than it was in 2024.
For those of you who like behind-the-scenes looks into lit mag work:
At
, Alli Rense has posted My Life as a Lit Mag First Reader. Writes Rense,Being a part of this process has helped me to understand personally that a rejection doesn’t mean my story was “bad” or that the readers and editors hated it. When I get a rejection, I think of all the submissions I’ve loved that we haven’t published. Or the ones that I didn’t like where my fellow readers said yes. I think about how much of it is a numbers game. I add the rejection to my tally and cross that mag off my list.
At
, Aaron Lelito interviews Amy Dupcak, Editor-in-Chief of Cagibi. “We chat about Amy’s writing background, from the moody poetry of adolescence to the publication of her short story collection dust, as well as some practical advice for submitting your work.”At
Cassie Mannes Murray interviews Aaron Burch, Founder of Hobart, HAD and Short Story, Long. Burch says,I think there’s kind of an interesting distinction between advice on “how to get published” vs. “how to become part of a community that you’re interested in.” And I guess my “advice” starts from a place of encouraging the latter. Right? “Break-in” or “find a place” because you think it’s interesting and exciting. And then, lead with that excitement, and nurture it in yourself, and I think that’s a great place to start.
On Mandira Pattnaik’s site, Namrata, Editor of Singapore-based Kitaab, has posted Through an Editor’s Eyes: The Joys and Realities of Running a Literary Magazine. Writes Namrata,
I often get asked, ‘What do editors really want?’ The truth is, there’s no formula for a perfect submission. But here’s what I can tell you: I look for authenticity. For writing that moves me, makes me think, lingers long after I’ve read the last line. A piece doesn’t have to be flashy or overly experimental—it just has to feel real. At Kitaab, the emphasis has, is, and will always be on quality writing and nothing else. Author credentials seldom make a difference.
At
, Amy Holman reviews two lit mags based in Hawai’i. In Aloha, Holman writes,This month we word-travel to Hawai’i for poetry and prose from two literary journals: the electronic Hawai’i Pacific Review and the print Bamboo Ridge. While the editors of each accept poetry and prose by writers from anywhere, each publication offers readers the editorial perspective and some of the creative output of the multicultural Hawaiian literary community.
For insights into the writing/submitting process,
has posted How a rejected pitch led to something doubly good. Rollins advises,[A]nytime someone shows interest in your writing— even if that interest is coupled with a rejection — take them seriously. People don’t offer invitations to submit more work, or to give media coverage, or anything, really, unless they mean it. Act on these offers. And while you need to be thoughtful and deliberate and produce high quality work, act soon so that they will remember you.
At Words Without Borders, Rosalind Harvey takes a look at herself, her relationship patterns and how these relate to the appeal and challenges of literary translation:
Was I drawn to literary translation in the same way I had been drawn to emotionally unavailable partners, partners who at first seemed to tap into something passionate and life-affirming within me, but who ended up withdrawing, or revealing hitherto unseen sides of themselves that were anathema to what I thought I was looking for?
In the latest episode of Rattle’s podcast “The Poetry Space,” the editors and hosts ask, “How can we craft a poetry workshop that inspires poets?” The hosts are “joined by poet and Pacific University professor Adrienne Christian to workshop our way to the perfect poetry workshop!”
At The New York Times, Savannah Sobrevilla reports on the “cult following” of Heavy Traffic Magazine, which hosted a reading recently:
When the door opened, a stampede of consciously disheveled young writers temporarily lost their cool, scrambling for a chair, or at least for the opportunity to sit on the floor and vape at the feet of their favorite thinkers.
…At the moment, Heavy Traffic is run by a three-man masthead: [Patrick] McGraw, the editor, the proofreader Joshua Beutum, 23, and the designer Richard Turley, 48, who also works for Interview magazine…Contributors run the gamut from architects to well-known authors to unknowns eager to be published.
Meanwhile, at Recovering Anarchist,
asks Why Is Every Writer Trying to Lowkey Build a Cult? Writes Gray,Over time, I watched other writers start charging for private conversations, hosting retreats, and promoting private support communities. These were all ways to create alternative income streams to complement what they made from their writing. In other words: they were monetizing their online personas, their attention and their wisdom. It wasn’t quite consulting, or therapy, or spiritual healing; it was a new hybrid, somewhere in between friendship-for-pay and sage-for-hire.
…Building a writing career wasn’t always like this.
At
, Marcela Santos Brigida makes an interesting argument about the slipperiness of genre classifications. In Literary Fiction is not real, Brigida writes,So yes, while I have been in enough creative writing courses to know that many writers will actually think of themselves as authors of literary fiction, I can tell you for sure that it simply does not exist. And that it really shouldn’t matter.
Books are just books, stories are just stories. There are absolutely dire novels being packaged as literary fiction with sleek covers, and there are brilliant, extraordinary novels marketed as romance. So next time you’re wondering what you should read next, maybe take a chance on a book you wouldn’t normally pick up?
At
(a Substack from The Wood Between the Worlds Press), Nicholas Kotar makes a similar argument. In What Defines the Stories We Publish?, he writes,Genre is insignificant when it comes to telling a good story. Genre is necessary not to the reading public, but to the buying public…
…The really great stories resist genre. They invert genre. They transcend genre and surprise you with something you didn’t know you needed until you read it.
At
, which publishes “fun pulp adventure tales with worthy protagonists attempting to achieve a noble outcome through honorable means,” the editors have advice about short story writing:The first 2,500 words are exposition? Rip it out. A thousand of your 8k words devoted to an infodump? Cut it out and save it for the novel. 1,500 words of world-building? Move it to your novel manuscript.
It’s a short story. If it looks like the first chapter of your novel, well, that’s what it is. Short stories aren’t chapters—first or otherwise—they’re complete stories.
Finally,
has announced its closing. Say the editors,It’s been six years since we had the idea for Orca, and after eighteen issues, 14,000 submissions, more than 1,000 feedback critiques, and about 300 published works we have decided to close our operation this coming June.
The decision was prompted by a variety of developments among the editorial staff. Life changes mostly, as in growing families and growing older, and those factors have significantly decreased the amount of time we can devote to the journal. And it isn’t always easy to face a mountain of submissions every day for that long without a little burnout.
This one makes me especially sad. I first met Editor Joe Ponepinto at AWP, sometime around 2014, when he and Kelly Davio had just founded Tahoma Literary Review. Joe is a super nice guy. So much so that in the write-up for my 2021 interview with him and his Orca co-Editors, I wrote:
The reader who alerted me to this magazine’s closing shared that she, too, had a great experience working with them. So, best wishes to the Orca team, congrats to Joe for creating not one but two fine lit mags, and onward we shall go.
As for us, a few more events still to come this month! We will have our Lit Mag Chat tomorrow, February 11th. And we will be meeting to discuss Post Road amongst ourselves, then again with Editor Christopher Boucher at the end of the month.
(If you are in the Lit Mag Reading Club and have not yet received your issue of Post Road, do not freak out. I haven’t yet received mine either. We shall all speed-read and it will be just fine!)
You can learn about all these events and register here:
Save the Dates! February interviews & info sessions!
And without further ado, here is the line-up for February!
And that you clever Cupids stringing your love-struck arrows, you of red roses and blue violets and all things that do or do not rhyme, such as footsteps, you who are blessed to be with your beloved, you bursting at the seams of your own blissful and beautiful self-adoration, you with your bounty of hearts—candy, chocolate, beating, you keeping company with your favorite companions, you with candle-light flickering in your moonlit eyes, you with ocean waves lapping at your sea-salted toes, you to be wined and dined, you to be wacky, wise and daydreaming, you and you, everywhere, happily, hopefully, in one way or certainly another, falling into a tumble of butterflies and sweetness, honey bears, savoring all the unspeakable swooning and still-of-the-night seductions worthy of your very own brave and hotly pounding heart, you in romance, you in friendship, you in adoration and just piles and piles of kitten fur, is the news in literary magazines.
Have a most sweet week, pals.
Fondly,
Becky
Given those new conditions, fuck applying. I will not comply.
My guess is that those conditions violate the first amendment. There’s no friggin way I would apply.