How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By Lit Mags!
AI training on pirated works; Hamline MFA & Water-Stone Review shuttered; Bodega & great weather for MEDIA closing; questionable contest practices; scammy presses; Buellers, & more!
Welcome to our bi-weekly news roundup!
Greetings Lit Magpies,
Today we have news and lots of it! AI theft, another MFA program getting gutted, scammy lit mags & presses, lit mags closing, musings on rejection, Buellers, and so much more. Get comfortable and buckle up!
Many writers were stunned to learn last week that Meta, the tech conglomerate that owns Facebook and Instagram, has been using their books to train its AI assistant, Llama 3. In a major story for The Atlantic, Alex Reisner outlines how Meta wished to circumnavigate time and financial costs, and so turned to LibGen.
What is LibGen? According to one site, “Library Genesis is a Shadow Library, and a useful and comprehensive online portal that offers free access to millions of ebooks, articles and pdf files in a range of languages.”
But what exactly is a “Shadow Library?” According to Wikipedia, “Shadow libraries are part of the open access and open knowledge movements. They seek to more freely disseminate academic scholarship and other media, often citing a moral imperative to make knowledge freely available.”
Fully-flowing information? Open access to knowledge? Free books for everyone in the world? Sounds pretty good. Except, according to Reisner, “Over the years, the collection has ballooned as contributors piled in more and more pirated work.” Now, that pirated work is being used to train Llama 3 and ultimately enrich Meta rather than the authors themselves, many of whom were unaware their works were even available.
The Author’s Guild has initiated legal action “against Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and other AI companies for using pirated books. If your book was used by Meta, you’re automatically included in the Kadrey v. Meta class action…”
To see if your own work, which includes pieces published in literary magazines, appears in LibGen, you can search the database here or use Reisner’s “cleaned-up version” here.
Reisner concludes,
One of the biggest questions of the digital age is how to manage the flow of knowledge and creative work in a way that benefits society the most. LibGen and other such pirated libraries make information more accessible, allowing people to read original work without paying for it. Yet generative-AI companies such as Meta have gone a step further: Their goal is to absorb the work into profitable technology products that compete with the originals.
Did you find your own work in LibGen? Were you surprised to learn that it may have been used to train Llama 3? Does The Singularity feel a tad too close for comfort these days?
In other news, Water~Stone Review and its host MFA program at Hamline University appear to be in trouble. According to MPR News,
On Feb. 28, [Kayla] Knoll, and other students in the program, received an “urgent message” from the creative writing program’s leadership…[It] began:
“Yesterday, it was announced to us that Hamline University Interim President Kathleen Murray and Interim Provost Andy Rundquist will be making the recommendation to the Hamline University Board of Trustees to sunset the MFA program effective immediately.”
The email also stated there would be cuts to the program’s coordinator position…and the entire budget of the Water~Stone Review, the program’s decades-old literary journal which publishes poetry, short stories, essays, book reviews and interviews.
“We are gutted,” the email continued.
The editorial board at The Oracle writes,
The “Water~Stone Review,” a literary journal founded at Hamline, has uplifted new voices and encouraged critical review of literature for over 25 years. They publish in a highly consistent manner, and have provided opportunities for students through their sister publication “Runestone.”…Through their community building and literary prowess, Water~Stone Review staff have shaped the literary landscape of both Minnesota and the greater Midwest area.
There is a petition to save the program and Water~Stone Review, which you can sign, right here.
Several questionable situations crossed my path this week.
First, I wanted to circle back to Dark Poets Club, which I discussed in my last newsletter. I had voiced concern that the magazine had no Terms & Conditions page, though one was required to “agree” to terms and conditions in order to subscribe to the newsletter. I also noted that the magazine had no masthead.
Mere minutes after that newsletter went out, I was notified that the site had been updated to include both a Terms & Conditions page and a masthead. Nonetheless, the masthead is anonymous. Is an anonymous masthead truly a masthead? Are you comfortable paying a $5 reading fee to unidentified readers? I’ll let you decide.
Moving on, a reader alerted me to something peculiar at Action Spectacle Press. Last week they announced the winner for the poetry and prose chapbook contest. The problem? Apparently the winner and the judge had previously co-authored a book together.
Realizing this breach of ethics, the editors posted to their site:
An update: We want to let everyone who submitted to the chapbook contest know that our judge for the Action Spectacle press, chapbook contest, Dan Beachy-Quick, it turns out co-authored a book with the winner of the contest. Submitted chapbook manuscripts were judged anonymously, and the submitters didn’t know who the judge was until after the judging was done. However, because of this complication, we will be publishing both Bruce Bond’s chapbook and the runner-up chapbook by EJ McAdams, entitled, Somehow. We’re excited to have two great chaps in the pipeline! Thanks to everyone who submitted!
How did the judge never learn the name of the contest winner at any point in this process? How did announcements go out to entrants without the judge ever realizing that the winner he selected happened to be someone with whom he wrote a book? Will the runner-up become the official contest winner? I do not have answers to these mysteries.
Meanwhile on Reddit, a writer posted:
I've been trying to figure out how to go about this for almost two years and finally decided to ask reddit. I won Juxtaprose's "2021-2022 Chapbook Prize" and received an email containing a contract in June 2023. I sent the contract back along with my payment info and since then... crickets. Though the journal continues to host contests and accept money from submitters, despite their website not being updated in years.
Does anyone know if there is any accountability for literary magazines that appear to be scams? Has this happened to anyone else, with Juxtaprose or another journal? Open to any and all advice here!
In case you missed it, I wrote about Juxtaprose here and here. And this is why:
Finally, Blacklist Lit has reported on Dancing Girl Press. “Dancing Girl Press is a publishing outfit that solicits and ‘publishes’ work from writers. The problem is that the press doesn't actually ship the chapbook out after receiving payment. This is hugely disappointing for writers and readers alike.”
On X, at least one user has echoed this:
Moving along, some thoughts on rejection letters caught my eye this week.
In A Cross-Generational Lesson in the Joy of Rejection, Diana Wagman writes,
A submission is an act of hope. It’s positive, it could even be thought of as joyful. Here is my work, or my job application, or my invitation, or even my vote. I am putting myself on the line because I think I’m worth it. I believe in myself. Before the no, there is an almost magical sense of yes.
In another day, another lit mag rejection!,
writes,As a writer, it’s nearly impossible not to feel the wave of disappointment flood through your veins when you read the opening of a rejection email. No matter how many rejections you’ve faced, the sting hits just as sharp as the first time.
Am I devastated by it? No. Disappointed? Of course. But I’m learning to take all things with a grain of salt. You may never know why some things unfold the way they do— and that’s not a terrible thing.
If you would like an inside look at one particular lit mag,
has interviewed the editors of The Common. They discuss:
what an editor at a literary magazine does
how they find submissions and how they choose what to publish at The Common
what makes a great writing mentor
the differences in writing short fiction and non-fiction vs longer-form books
advice for aspiring writers on how to decide what to write and the shape of your career
And at Authors Publish Ratika Deshpande has posted Lessons from My Most Prolific Year of Writing and Getting Published:
Narrow down your list of target publications. If you aim to get 100 rejections in a year like I did, it’s tempting to try submitting to a lot of publications, in the hopes of having a higher chance of acceptance. That may be mathematically true (I’m not the best with numbers) but it’s not the best strategy in the writing world. Familiarity with the publication to which you’re submitting matters more, which requires extensive reading. So if you aim for a long list of publications, you’ll need a lot more time.
Several lit mags have announced closing:
Bodega says,
On August 31st, 2025—after the publication of our 150th issue—Bodega is closing up shop. It has been a remarkable 13 years of publishing new and established voices in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and we are forever grateful to our entire community for this experience. Everyone who has read Bodega, trusted us to publish their work, and donated their time and money to keep us going has left a permanent impression on our hearts.
great weather for MEDIA says,
We have some difficult news to share.
From April 2025 we will begin the closing of great weather for MEDIA. Since January 2012 the goal of this press has been to create community, curate unpredictable and fearless anthologies, and to bring into the world bright, innovative single-author collections.
…To our writers, readers, audience members, and to everyone who has supported us for the last thirteen years, we thank you. We are immensely proud of the work we have done, but it is time to focus our energies elsewhere.
So long, journals, and thanks to the editors for the good work you’ve done!
And now, my dears, it’s time to revive a beloved section of this newsletter…The Buellers!
As a reminder, this is the section of the newsletter where we explore those lit mags whose editors seem to have vanished. Their websites may be active or not, their social media might be active or not, but nothing is really clear. No new issues, but no departing message either. They might still be open for submissions. Maybe you’ve had work accepted and can’t get a response. We just don’t know what is going on, leaving us all to wonder…
A writer wrote to me about Litro. The writer has had work accepted here but is unable to get in touch with the editor. “The genre editor is no longer on the masthead.”
Another wrote to me about American Chordata. “[T]heir usual January to March 15th annual submission period never opened this year…and I don't think they published their 2024 issue. Hope all's okay, as they always put together a beautiful journal!”
If you or anyone you know has information about these magazines, or if you’ve got a Bueller of your own, please let us know!
As for us, a few more events are coming up this week. On Wednesday, I will be chatting with John Skoyles, Guest Editor (and former Poetry Editor) of Ploughshares and on Friday I’ll be speaking with Christopher Boucher, Editor of Post Road. You can learn about both these events and register here.
Also, the April selection for our Lit Mag Reading Club is The Pinch! I am waiting to hear about a possible discount and I will keep you all updated once I know more. I will also provide the April schedule for interviews and events very soon!
In the meantime, you can learn more about our terrific and fun Lit Mag Reading Club here.
And that you packers and preppers setting your sights on that grand Western coast, you travelers and trekkers, trying on shoes and readying yourself for the readings to come, you bag-checkers and pre-boarders, you luggage-carousel dizziness delighters, you eyeing the passengers next to you all suddenly (and most amazingly) reading literary magazines!, you with your accommodations arranged, you with hotel hopes in your happy hoppings, you with so many iterations of a single itinerary, you shooting off into off-site events, you roaming the bookfair with amused sideways glances and a secret quest for snacks, you and you, out to the great wonderland of AWP, to enjoy it! to bring back tales to tell! to have a grand old time! you and, you, maybe you’re worried? but I’m here to say, don’t be! you’ll love it! and you’ll do just fine!, because of course, you’re you and so you are and that is all, while, as for everyone else, you’ll be fine too, at home, in the workweek, at the gym, or, of course, where else, at the writing desk, whispering like always, into those divine wondrous winds which speak only ever to you, is the news in literary magazines.
Have a super week, pals!
Fondly,
Becky
Devastated to hear about Water~Stone.
Dancing Girl Press is a scam. I ordered one of their books, paid for it, and never received it. I emailed the owner and never heard back.