February lit mag brag!
"The end of each month is all about you!"
Welcome to our weekend conversation!
Dear ones! Can you believe it’s already the last weekend of February? I simply cannot.
Yet the calendar does not lie. We have indeed once again raced, paced, tumbled, fumbled, written, fallen smitten, revised, devised, plotted, yachted, crawled, clawed and done all manner of maneuvers in order to arrive, once again, at the end of the month.
Those of you longtime readers of Lit Mag News know what happens here.
If you’re new here—welcome!
The end of each month is all about you.
Here is the space to celebrate and share your publication wins of February. In doing so, we honor not only those wins but all the hard work, research, passion, commitment, determination, drive and not-giving-up-on-yourself-ness that goes into this work.
Tell us: Where did you publish work this past month? Share links!
How did you find the magazine?
Did you submit the piece to many places or just a few?
Did you revise as you submitted or was it done and on its way?
Did the editors work with you on revisions?
Are you happy with the final product?
Don’t be shy! Sharing your success helps others get inspired and learn about new places to submit.
Some come on out and step right up, dear friends.
It is time to brag your lit mag!
After receiving numerous rejections from agents, saying that they couldn't get into my main character, or that the material was too fragmented, my novel won the PEN America Bare Life Review Grant. It blew me away what they had to say about the novel:
The Air Beneath Her Feet is a powerful exploration of displacement, survival, and the precarious reality of living in exile. Though taking place during the first Trump presidency, its themes remain profoundly relevant today, capturing the fear, uncertainty, and resilience of immigrants navigating hostile systems. With prose that is deceptively simple yet deeply deliberate, the piece carries immense emotional weight, drawing the reader into the ongoing struggles of those forced to leave home. It is a story that pulses with urgency, refusing to be merely an intellectual or artistic exercise – it bears witness to the prolonged survival of the displaced. The work’s commitment to language as a cultural anchor is particularly striking, as the writer insists on making it available not only in English but also in Spanish, recognizing the over eight million Venezuelans living in the U.S., Europe, and South America. This decision speaks to the power of language as both a claim to identity and an act of resistance against erasure. The piece’s clarity of purpose, its ability to articulate both the hope and despair of being caught between catastrophe and catastrophe. More than just a depiction of struggle, The Air Beneath Her Feet insists on being heard, offering a raw and unflinching look at the realities of displacement in a world where true safety remains elusive.
Check the PEN America page here:
https://pen.org/announcing-the-2025-pen-america-grant-winners/
Now if I can just find an agent with the balls to represent the work.
“The Night Caller” in Yellow Mama magazine. I wrote it a year ago and shopped it around to two others before this acceptance. My writing group had reworked it, but the editor liked my original better. Go figure. https://blackpetalsks.tripod.com/yellowmama/id3395.html