Guilty Lit Mags Have Got No Rhythm!
Tech titan shenanigans; Juxtaprose gonna Juxtaprose; new lit mag for incarcerated writers & editors; advice from lots of lit mag editors; many job & volunteer opportunities; markets and more.
Welcome to our bi-weekly news roundup!
Greetings Lit Magaroni,
Last week I noticed something strange happening on Twitter. The links I shared to this newsletter got little to no engagement.
For anyone unfamiliar with the world of social media, there is a practice called shadow-banning. This is where the tech titans allow your content to be posted, however engagement with that content is restricted.
What makes this practice so insidious is that the person posting content may have no idea it is taking place. With their own content visible to themselves but lacking engagement from others, they’re left to wonder, Is it me? Was it something I did wrong??
Or, in my case, IS EVERYONE OUT HAVING LIT-MAG RELATED FUN SOMEWHERE WITHOUT ME? HAS THE ENTIRE WORLD TURNED AGAINST LIT MAG NEWS ONCE AND FOR ALL?!?!?!?
Just look at this sad and lonely tweet from the weekend: 251 views and not a single like or reply:
Well, it turns out, the problem wasn’t me. (Or, it wasn’t entirely me.)
Soon after observing multiple Substack-related tweets get ignored, I learned that there was an actual feud happening between the CEO’s of Twitter and Substack. I won’t go into all the nitty gritty details. You can read about it here, here and here.
What matters to us is the retaliatory measures Elon Musk has been taking against Substack. As the Guardian reports:
Over the Easter weekend, any tweet containing a Substack link was algorithmically deprioritised, blocked from being liked or retweeted, and hidden in search. Searches for the term “substack” itself were automatically replaced with searches for the word “newsletter”.
And many users who did manage to find and click on a link to a Substack site reported being warned by Twitter that the service was “unsafe or malicious.”
As of now, I’m not entirely sure where things stand. Some are saying the dust has settled and everything is back to normal. Others have told me the problems remain ongoing.
But worry not, friends! We can all rest assured that these conflicts are being addressed with nothing but utmost maturity and reasonableness.
All this is to say, dear readers, if there are Substacks you enjoy, please do help the writers by sharing their newsletters as much as you can. Email people you think might enjoy them. Talk about them in your own newsletters. Spread the word any which way. It means so much to us, helps sustain our work, and keeps up morale as we watch the richest man in the world take it upon himself to poop all over all that we are trying to build.
Thank you!
On to the week’s news!
Juxtaprose Magazine, which I mentioned in a newsletter several weeks ago, has finally come forward after months of silence. The editors explained why they continue to accept contest fees while continuously pushing back contest deadlines. They made a heartfelt apology to all submitters for taking so much of their money and promised to rectify this situation by immediately announcing all contest winners, notifying all entrants, and paying out prizes.
Just kidding!
Sorry to get your hopes up. What has really happened is that the magazine has again pushed their announcement of winners back from its previous date of March 7th to March 26th to April 4th and now:
Some people have asked me whether Submittable should get involved here. Well, one reader did, in fact, reach out to Submittable. This was the response:
Now, Submittable does say that they “will look into the matter further” if they “receive numerous complaints.” From looking at Submittable’s contact page, it is not entirely clear where to direct such complaints. But perhaps if enough people contact tech support, this might be a matter they will have to address. Godspeed!
In other news, Georgia State University has received a grant to launch a lit mag by and for incarcerated people. According to the university website,
Beyond Bars will be overseen by an editorial board composed of four Georgia State creative writing graduate students and three incarcerated students, a first-of-its kind editorial structure for a literary publication. Over three years, this team will produce six issues of the literary journal containing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and artwork created and submitted by incarcerated people across the nation. As editorial board members, the incarcerated editors will be able to gain the resources and employable skills necessary to support themselves after their release from the carceral system…
If you’re looking for insights into Cornell’s lit mag Epoch, this interview with Jay Robert Lennon (who goes by John) might be of interest. Says John,
I think that my failure rate has gone down as I’ve gotten older, in part because I’ve become a better writer, but also in part because I’ve learned what my career is and how to navigate the outside world vis a vis the things that I write. So I think that it’s inevitable for someone just starting out to just flail around for a while because you don’t you can’t see the walls around you until you start bumping into them, right? Just try some stuff.
By the way, Slate wants to hear from writers! They say, “Hey, listeners, what’s your experience been with submitting short stories or getting your work out there at all? Get in touch and share your advice.”
For craft advice, on her Substack Kathy Fish has some thoughts on writing exposition for flash pieces. “The key to writing good exposition is to treat it with as much care as you do all of your other writing.” Her recommended reading includes two new anthologies of flash fiction.
If you’re free on May 17th, Electric Literature is hosting a free salon dedicated to literary magazines.
Leadership from [One Story, Taco Bell Quarterly, The Offing and Litro] will have a candid conversation about how they stay afloat, the role of literary magazines in the cultural landscape, and their predictions for the future. Moderated by Halimah Marcus, executive director of Electric Literature. This free discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A.
For those looking for creative work from Arab American writers, Council of Literary Magazines and Presses has a list of lit mags and small presses featuring such work. This includes a special collaborative issue “between Rusted Radishes, which is dedicated to ‘creating a space for both emerging and established writers who have a connection to Lebanon,’ and Megaphone, [which] ‘raises questions about how we receive the disapproving gaze of the other.’”
For those of you who’d like to get to work behind the scenes of a lit mag, opportunities abound this spring!
CRAFT is looking for volunteer readers.
Outlook Springs seeks fiction readers.
Unlikely Stories seeks a staff reviewer. (Email the editors directly if interested.)
Literary Mama is looking for a Publicity Editorial Assistant, a Reviews Editorial Assistant and a Fundraising Coordinator. (These are all volunteer positions.)
The Loveliest Review seeks a Drama Editor.
One Story seeks a Marketing Coordinator.
Ninth Letter is in search of a Managing Editor.
For those of you seeking homes for your latest & greatest, poet Candace Williams spoke with Poets & Writers about personally meaningful publishing venues. These include Sixth Finch, Bennington Review, Wildness and others.
Erica Verrillo has posted 22 Literary Magazines Open NOW for Poetry, Short Fiction, Essays, CNF, Speculative Fiction and more — Paying markets
Authors Publish has 30 Literary Magazines that Publish Poetry and 20 Literary Journals with Fast Response Times
You can find more April publishing opportunities here.
As for us, a reminder that I will be interviewing After Dinner Conversation Editor Kolby Granville this Wednesday and Iowa Review Editor Lynne Nugent next Friday. Learn about both events here:
For paying subscribers, you can find the registration links to info sessions and the interview with Lynne here.
Please note: You do not need to read all of Iowa Review’s current issue to participate in the discussion. The Lit Mag Reading Club is meant to serve you, so don’t stress, take a load off, come as you are, join us.
For May’s Lit Mag Reading Club, we will be reading Pleiades and speaking with Editor Jenny Molberg. I’ll share more about that, including a possible journal discount, in the days ahead.
More info about the Lit Mag Reading Club can be found here.
And that you sleep-deprived slugs slouching through your days toward some unknown destination that is sure to be somehow simultaneously over-stimulating and exhausting, you insomniacs with the spirit of a thousand restless wanderers scaling the undersides of your skin all through the star-spangled night, you whose worries never cease, you whose eyes close but never quite dream—or rather, it’s the mind that does or doesn’t dream, isn’t it, not the eyes. See? One would know such things, if one would actually ever sleep…—you who thrash and throttle the great unyielding stream of endless Nothings in Particulars, you who tumble tumultuously in the torturous tangle of sweat-soaked too-thick things, you alert and wakeful as a lion but at all the wrong times, you tired as a chicken bone sloshing around in someone else’s boring and brothy ideas, you and you, out there, everywhere, brain spiked with words, tongue slippery with sibilance, teeth grinding and screws tightening endlessly, unapologetically, eternally, in the great pencil sharpener of your brilliant, desperate and wide-awakened never-back-to-sleep mind, is the news in literary magazines.
Have a most restful week, pals.
Fondly,
Becky
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again: KEEP RANTING! I love your rants, and you should definitely publish them!
The euphemistally named Twitter Help basically ignored me for two and a half weeks when I could not get access to my acocunt because of a glitch and I had to hire a tech person to fix it. Twitter sucks. As far as Submittable and all the crappy fees, I feel like I am living in a literary dystopia where everyone wants to be a writer, but few people really write, and when real writers get into digital or paper print, no one reads it. Lit Mag News is one of a precious few Substacks that really matters because it addresses these issues. That a billionaire moron like Furlong Tusk should sacrifice an entire community because of his own petulance is dispiriting to say the least and proof positive that the tech bros will destroy everything decent if we keep shutting up and taking it.