If you’re reading this, it means I have safely arrived in France, where I will be visiting relatives for the next month. I do not speak French, but that’s quite all right. By now I have perfected the art of stuffing my face with the kinds of cheese that flood every brain cell with ecstasy, such that my companions could be saying anything at all, and I am perfectly content just eating and nodding along for four weeks straight.
Also, I promised you some horse photos, so here are a few magnificent creatures.
Anyway, enough about me!
My dear friends, we have arrived at another end of another month. If you are a longtime reader of Lit Mag News, you know what that means! If you’re new here, welcome.
The last weekend of every month is all about celebrating each one of you—your perseverance, your hustle, your commitment to craft and your overall grit. If you’ve had something published this past month, please tell us all about it!
Where did the work appear? (Share links!)
How did you find this magazine?
How many places did you submit to before the piece found its happy little home?
Did you revise as you submitted or was it published in its original form?
A wonderful prose poem - just loved how you described the refractions of stained-glass light on the skin as "bruises, brthmarks, port-wine stains" and the juxtaposition (and surprise) of the "Dracula" reference at the end with the religous imagery.
Trish, this is beautiful!!! Shake off those rejections and celebrate this! WOW! It’s clear that you were very intentional in making every word do its work in this micro piece. I was especially struck by “with alabaster fenestration “. I rolled that around my mouth a few times. Bravo! 🎉
Years ago, an editor called the day before Thanksgiving to tell me they were dropping my book. I was devastated, but very soon sold it to a much better publisher. Karma's on my mind because it's a major theme of Shogun (1300 pages!), which I read again after seeing the new miniseries.
Congratulations, Trish! What a beautiful piece! Like Melissa, I loved " it wasn’t only the stained glass, the bruises, birthmarks and port-wine stains it cast on our skin by moonlight."
This is a beautiful poem, Patricia, with all its unexpected couplings of dark and light: the bruise colours and moonlight; winter and ‘milder’ times; Dracula as ‘lighter’ fare.
The month of June has been good to me with five of my pieces taken.
First of all, Impspired published my poem “A Signal Failure”. To fully understand it some knowledge of Morse code is required, I’m afraid. The use of italics to indicate word stress is also significant. The poem can be found at https://impspired.com/2024/05/31/tony-dawson-3/
“Love of the Old” has been accepted by the Macrame Literary Journal for its summer issue.
“Paris is Always a Good Idea”, a poem written in response to a theme on Paris and music, was based on my memories of postwar Paris and published by Syncopation Literary Journal Volume 2 Issue 3 Paris, at
I have so much respect and admiration for your work, Tony. I loved Signal Failure especially. It made me think of my father-in-law who was a cryptographer in WW2. He died last year at the age of 87 and he never had the mastery of language that you possess. He was the funniest person I ever knew though. My life’s goal is to be like you—to remain sharp and productive and creative right up til that moment when I meet my Creator. You are doing great things with your life, you’re leaving a beautiful legacy, and you’re blazing a trail ahead for the rest of us, showing us the way to go. Godspeed!
Thank you Tracie for your kind comment. I’m glad “Signal Failure” brought back happy memories for you. I must give my wife, who is eighteen years younger than me, the credit for keeping me alert and on my toes. She’s also so much cleverer than I am.
That’s an embarrassingly flattering comment, Melissa. The thing is I’m 87 years old so, on the one hand I have a lot of “background”, let’s say, to draw on and on the other, a pressing need to write as much as I can before I pop my clogs. I still have quite a lot of work out there awaiting acceptance or rejection, but some of the more “prestigious” sites, e.g. Rattle, take an eternity to decide because they receive hundreds of submissions. However, I am extremely touched and happy to be appreciated by quality writers like you. Thank you.
Thank you, Tony. Yes, that's a rich "memory palace" - but not every writer would have acceptance success in so many genres, so I think it's more than an age issue! Yes, Rattle is a long wait - I've given up & withdrawn from them once - lost my nerve! I'm waiting till I clock up a few more creds in journals at 10% & below acceptance rates before I submit again - unless it's an ekphrastic challenge 'cos I'm pretty experienced with that process.
I also got an essay published in Syncopation. I'll link in a full post. I really enjoyed the vibe and editor of this journal, though the website could be better. What did you think?
Natalie Welsh was delightful in her dealings with me. A pleasure to engage with. As for the website, I feel it would be churlish of me to criticize it for its simple layout, especially as I have never been able to construct a website of my own! At least, it is easy to find the contributors’ work. Admittedly, it didn’t take any effort to find mine as it was the first poem listed.
“A Signal Failure” is such a whimsical and clever piece, Tony. (All I can decipher from the very last line are the two ‘o’s --I once learned to spell my name in morse.) “How to Spin a Yarn” and “Hostile Environment” are both delightful and made me laugh. “Paris is a good idea” is so musical, especially when read aloud. You, and your writing, are an inspiration!
Congrats, Tony! Love your witty wordplay that shines through these gems. "Morse...Remorse..." No remorse on my part after taking time to read, I assure you.
Thanks, Goldie, it’s heartwarming to be appreciated. I came to writing very late in life. I happened to have my first poem, called "Lithuanian Cat’s Cradle" published by Critical Survey, in 2013 when I was 76. If you are interested, you can find it here:
I then published a couple more in 2019, but when the pandemic hit Spain, like many others, I thought it was the perfect time to apply myself to writing regularly.
I’m glad to hear that my flash fiction passed muster. You probably realized that with the name Ariadna Ragno, I was vaguely alluding to the myth of Theseus in the labyrinth and making her surname the Italian word for spider.
I confess I didn't at the time, Tony - but don't hold it against me - it was nearly 1am when I was reading it & one eye kept closing!. I'd have definitely picked up on that if I was more alert - I adore mythic allusions. :)
Congratulations, Tony—I just read and enjoyed "Paris....", felt myself swaying with the music you created in the poem. I look forward to reading more during my first relaxing day of the week today!
I’m delighted to once again have microfiction in MoonPark Review! This was my first time being published by the same lit mag for a second time, if that makes sense. I love that they’re professional, relatively quick to respond, and take the utmost care once the work is accepted (they send proofs before the issue goes live, one of the editors does original illustrations to accompany each piece, and they promote on social media).
I also received my first honorable mention in a writing contest (and in life!) for my microfiction “Eternal Rest” in Exposition Review (Flash 405 contest). If you’re open to contests with fees it’s a good one—entries cost a whole $5. No simultaneous submissions, but it took them a little over month post-deadline to get back to winners and 1.5 months to notify everyone else, which was a reasonable amount of time for exclusivity in my mind. I wrote this piece specifically for the contest theme, "Home" (max word count: 405). Their current contest theme is “Persona,” for anyone interested: https://expositionreview.com/2024/05/call-for-entries-flash-405-june-2024-persona/
Congrats. I love the fresh take and cleverness of the trout piece. I spent much of my scientific career studying trout and fish for them regularly. Here's a very different sort of trout piece you might enjoy, if trout aren't just a passing fancy https://www.salvationsouth.com/will-the-rivers-still-run-blue-ridge-mountain-rivers-essay-gary-grossman/ I've submitted CNF/memoir pieces to Exposition Review and received excellent feedback with my rejections. Some day...
Gary! Thank you, and I'm honored to have you comment on this work as an actual trout expert! It's not every day I meet one of those! Your essay is a gorgeous piece of both nature and personal writing—I was right there, dipping my feet in the cool river, excited to learn about this region that I, as a Brooklynite, know little about and now want to protect. Thank you for sharing it. Re: Expo Review's excellent feedback on rejections, that's great sign! Someday indeed...
Thanks so much for the kind words. Many times I hesitate to post something directly relevant on someone else's pub post, for fear it will be interpreted as me trying to seize the moment.
In my book, that practice is all good as long as the piece is relevant, like you said, and the point is to add to the conversation versus some sort of weird oneupmanship (check and check, in your case). I enjoyed your piece and am glad you shared it.
Congrats on your Honorable Mention, Goldie. That's awesome! And I enjoyed how you played with both the fish / bicycle concept and extended the fish-catching metaphor in "Love Bites" - very original. It conveyed so much about unhealthy dynamics & heartbreak in relationships, but did so in an understated manner that was all the more emotionally affecting as I read it. I liked Monpark Review's aesthetics / guidelines - adding to my "submit" list.
Thanks very much for your congrats and your close read, Melissa! And yay, MoonPark Review is super cool, they are an exciting venue to have on the to-submit list. I also love that their issues come out on the solstices and equinoxes.
"Love Bites"is such a fine and witty piece, Goldie—that wry last line is both hilarious and a shock! Congratulations on having it accepted by MoonPark Review—a fine magazine.
"You were fine with your little fishy life...." Love this! (relatable) Congrats Goldie. I just had a piece accepted with MoonPark Review for Fall 2024. Your positive comments affirm what I intuitively felt about this journal and its kind editors!
Thank you, Karin! Yes, they're great! And congrats on the acceptance—excited to read the work when it comes out! What a gift to have someone make art to accompany your writing.
Wow, both, Love Bites and Eternal Rest, wrenched my heart. Both deal with death in ways that are going to have me thinking all day about fairness and empathy.
No acceptances, but I've had 4 positive rejections (This piece isn't right for us, but your story is good, please send us more) recently, so yay?
I will have 2 short memoir pieces scheduled to be published in Nifty Lit by the end of July/beginning of August, so hopefully I can provide a link then.
Perseverance!! Thank goodness for those kind editors who provide encouragement and a ray of hope amidst all those mind-numbing, soul-crushing rejections we are all too familiar with!
June has been full of acceptance surprises - but publications first. My shape prose poem "GirlHood" (a feminist Red Riding Hood reimagining) is now live in NonBinary Review's "Heredity" Issue (via Zoetic Press)."GirlHood" is part of a series of reimaginings I'm working on for a chapbbok, so I didn't write it especially for their call, but have been on the look-out for journals to send some out to. It was a pretty heavy-duty editing process to get the shape right for the digital edition, but the editors were great & very professional to work with. For the print journal, it's a regular block prose poem due to formatting limitations. There will also be an interview on their website (like Nicola, it's my first!) when I can catch my breath, answer the questions & send them in. Zoetic Press do a lot for their authors! There's also the "Alphanumeric" fortnightly podcast of individual pieces, & I'm patiently waiting my turn for that. Here's the digital issue link (not free, but $5 for an award-winning journal is pretty good value!)
Acceptances were: 1.A flash fic reimagining Galatea & Pygmalion for a new themed journal called Cold Signal. The theme was the myth, & I had this story from Galatea's pov tucked away. I love Chill Subs "Where to submit this week" list, which is where I spotted the call.
2. Recipes of al things! I submitted some flash fic to anthology called "Cursed Cooking". He wanted "food horror" fiction & took reprints. I had 3 flash that happened to fit. Plus he wanted recipes for the antho. Two of my stories were shortlisted, but he ended up accepting all 5 of my recipes! (Maybe I've missed my true calling). It was a paying call - literally money for jam!
3. An erotic story for my pseudonym for a newish project - but I think I've been ghosted because I dared ask some questions about the contract. They were paying $50 for my story - so I'm pretty annoyed. They could just be closed for June - but it was mid-conversation, so I've no idea what's going on. TBC?
4. 3 poems (1 free verse, 2 hybrid pieces) were accepted to Breath & Shadow after a "limbo submission" from 2023 with no word. All 3 were on the theme of mental health - (explorations of my experience with PTSD). I finally got an email in early June explaining the former editor had passed away, but now there's someone new at the helm, so I was invited to re-submit. She accepted all 3 of my poems! They pay between $25 & $40 per piece.
C'est tout pour moi! Becky, I hope you enjoy all that fromage Francais ... maybe you could write an ode to cheese.
You know how much I admire “GirlHood,” Melissa. I’m so looking forward to reading your interview. Congratulations, too, on the acceptance for Galatea and Pygmalion, and five (!) recipes in Cursed Cooking? The journal name sends the imagination rocketing after what might be in them. I hope you haven’t been ghosted on the erotic story; that’s a horrible feeling. Fingers crossed that a response will come soon. And how great to have 3 poems accepted to Breath & Shadow after such a long wait. What an amazing month!
Hi Donna - thank you so much for your comments. Yes, the apparent (?) ghosting was / is rather strange - I only asked for clarification about a particular paragraph that was dense with if and maybe's of further uses (all unpaid, of course) for my story.
ZP are awesome - I highly recommend them as a journal to submit to. And I'm excited about my "trifecta" of accepted poems for Breath & Shadow - that's never happened to me before. One (Insomnia) is a piece I've been trying to place for over a year - I must have submitted it at least a dozen times! I slightly revised its opening this time & wonder if that made a difference.
I hope your writing is going well (I know I owe you an email!). And I'll let you know when the interview is up. :)
Thanks, Kresha. It's an intriguing genre to write in. I'm actually thinking of starting a Substack around fary tale & myth reimaginings, as it's something I'm very passionate about. For now, my profile on Chill Subs (website) has links to my published work. To direct you a little, I have a Pandora reimagining in an anthology - "Anna Karenina Isn't Dead".
Thanks, Emma. 🙂 They are great, & always seem to be looking out for their writers. The issue looks like it has some fantastic content, so I'm looking forward to reading. Have you been published with them too?
Yes they published a poem of mine a while back. I really love what they are doing - the work is always interesting to me. Placing 3 at once is awesome!
Congrats on all your successes this month, Melissa! As you already know, I absolutely loved Girlhood. I look forward to reading the others (including your recipes :) You are inspiring!
Overall, I'd sent this piece to 20 lit mags. Fifteen rejections. I overhauled it and the title with the help of a mentor after 11 rejections. After the acceptance, I withdrew from three lit mags.
I thought the editors had ghosted me, because the acceptance email promised a follow-up email that I never received. But, in the end, after calls to their offices (at American University), I finally got a response. A bizarre process to get paid (this is a university publication, after all).
My CNF essay, “My Daily Academic Planner, 1977-1978,” about my junior year abroad in West Germany, appeared in the Vassar Review.
The editing here was kind of brutal, and the student editors didn't quite understand that West Germany of 1977-1978, including an antisemitic incident, was not like Germany today. But I am happy with the results. The "hermit crab" essay, written in the form of a daily academic planner, was sent to three lit mags; one rejected, one accepted, and I withdrew from the third. I'd been working on this piece since last summer's retreat in Austria, but it wasn't until I found the form that the piece clicked.
These were one and dones: I’ve had two more poems accepted for the Ekphrastic Review Challenge (“The Zodiac Gallery at the Bialystoker Shul” and “Manifesto to King Leopold II), also outside the challenge, a nonfiction piece, “The Appropriation of Brueghel,” that appeared on May 25.
Other poetry acceptances include “My Father’s Shop-Rite as Family Portrait, 1968,” by Here: A Poetry Journal, and “Sinew,” by Minyan. I submitted to six lit mags, received four rejections and withdrew from one. I've long wanted to get into Minyan.
Another one and done: Brevity Blog published my piece, “Why I Write to Timed Prompts,” on June 18.
Very cool, and congrats on the win. I have almost given up on submitting to student-run reviews, and academic reviews in general. I've just had so little success and I think they and I have an "interest-gap" or a "values-gap" or a "something-gap". Thank goodness there are so many independent reviews out there...
Barbara, Congratulations on all these successes! You've been busy since were last in touch! So far, I've only had a chance to read your beautiful short story, "The Newcomer," but I look forward to reading all the others. But wow - you really capture that moment in history, as well as Leo's grief. Loved your story.
Thanks so much, Lori! I'm working on a short story collection about the displaced and refugeeism. Just started a new story this week inspired by a webinar I attended hosted by the Center for Jewish History.
Congratulations and thank you for sharing so frankly, your experiences with these journals. I read your piece about prompts in Brevity, and found myself nodding...I've just recently come to appreciate timed prompts, as you say, stepping in and out of the cave! :)
Congratulations on winning the Folio fiction prize with this lovely, poignant story, Barbara! The dialogue so real, Leo’s struggles with the abyss between English spelling and pronunciation, and the way you describe how objects familiar to us, like the slinky toy, might appear to someone who has never seen them before. Leo’s journey through the past, the present, and a hinted-at future is moving and compelling. I really liked your Brueghel piece in the Ekphrastic Review, too. Prof. C. is an interesting character, portrayed so well in so few lines.
Enjoy France! 'Café au lait, s'il vous plait' is a necessity!
June seems to have been a popular publishing month for my submissions. I had my lighthearted 'The Godfather of Garden End' published in Glyph Lit, then 'Eleven Eleven' came out in Sophon Lit. They also did a lovely interview on me as their featured prose contributor which I've never done before and was so grateful for.
I'm also due to have 'A Very Good School' come out in Fabula Argentea tomorrow, AND Tangled Web are due to publish 'Green Fingers' soon too. It's been a VERY busy month!
I had my very first paid acceptance from Saving Daylight recently which was the icing on the cake, but now I have little left in the pipeline, it's time to focus on the novel 🙂
I was happy to have an essay published in Persimmon Tree this month, after it had been rejected a couple of times at other places. They accepted it over a year before it appeared, and I thought it would never come out. It's a rather dark story about a murderer in my family! The editor made a few minor changes, which improved it I think, and I declined a couple of her other suggestions. https://persimmontree.org/summer-2024/lauras-story/
I just finished your essay and have to say I am gob smacked! Not just by the subject, horrible enough as it is, but by your writing, your description of what transpired and how it affected you and your family. Brava, fellow writer! And congratulations on your publication success.
I experienced the pleasure and satisfaction of three poem placements this month, as well as acceptances for two other pieces to be published later this year. One of the poems published in June was especially gratifying in that this was a reprint of a poem originally published this same month back in 2021. Love when that happens!
Congratultions, Julie. I like all three poems, but especially wolverine. "milkweed and dame's rocket / engulf the springtime banks / of this swollen estuary" - I was completely hooked and, to mix my metaphors, knew I was in safe hands.
Congrats, Julie. I enjoyed "Wolverine" - your description of its limbs as "abbreviated" & this wonderful question: "will I ever rise up to issue / my own guttural roar?". Great work!
I published a short humorous essay, "Coming to Terms," in WItcraft (thanks Doug Jacquier!). It was on May 29, but it happened after the last lit mag brag, so... https://witcraft.org/2024/05/29/coming-to-terms/
Doug, "Any Tom, Dick, or Harry" is just great. I love the different layers of people knowing and knowing that the others know, and the ending is terrific.
Congrats, Doug, on all. Liked the Brevity piece. Commonsense tips and market overview. A couple of writers from years gone by that I used to like are Thomas Berger (most famous for "Little Big Man") and Tom Sharpe. I'd have to revisit to see if I still got at least a chuckle from them now.
Forgive me for cheating a little here. I'm not too the newsletter, and as this is my first "mag brag," I thought I'd share my story "Sawdust," which is the published work I'm most proud of.
Welcome, Evan! I so enjoyed this piece, feeling haunted by the house's dilapidated atmosphere and the ghosts of all that had transpired there. And such lush descriptions! Darn right you should be proud.
I've had good luck with the themed issues of Deep Overstock, a publication geered towards writers associated with the publishing industry, but I understand open to anyone. In their Spring "Classics" issue, they published another poem of mine (3rd time with them!) called "The Minor Keys," which is about love and music, but for me an exercise in managing a poem with zero punctuation: https://deepoverstock.com/2024/04/30/the-minor-keys-by-david-de-young/
They've been great to work with, done copy-edits only on my work. I like also that they do a regular quarterly print issue as I'm a bit old fashioned and like to see my work also on the page.
Thanks for indulging my brag! I get so few chances as it's been a slow year for acceptances.
My "Approaching Zero" is in the spring issue of The Hudson Review: hudsonreview.com/2024/05/approaching-zero It's a poem heavily influenced by former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. I admired The Hudson Review before I started submitted poetry more than three decades ago, and it has always been at the top of my list of journals. There was no editing & there no issues--the editors were prompt and supportive. I have gotten nice Twitter feedback @amjuster.
Congratulations, Sarah - & that's an intriguing cross-genre you've chosen. (Amazon do have annoyingly long links, don't they?) Best wishes for its success! Might I ask what its premise is?
Apparently not unusually for the LIT MAG NEWS community, June was an oddly acceptance-full month, with nine poems accepted from four lit mags and one anthology. None available online right now, but two posted with permission at my Facebook feed, which I'll post at the end, and the rest coming during the summer and early fall.
My favorite acceptance was a poem whose idea has been with me since a trip to Italy in 2011, when I became fascinated with the unfinished sculptures of Michelangelo in the hallway "enroute" to seeing the David. Many revisions during the journey to completing it to my satisfaction resulted in sixteen rejections, with revisions again after each, until I found the voice I wanted. When I found it, the details and stanzas fell into place. Synkroniciti accepted "I'm Not 'David' " for their "Vulnerable"-themed issue, which is out now. The visuals are wonderful, with a black background and the stone unfinished sculpture, "Young Slave" in two views that truly complement the poem. It was a pleasure to work with the editor, Katherine McDaniel. https://www.facebook.com/carol.grannick/posts/pfbid0J2yCgNA6GdjZG6yJLePZGp1bistaGJCtNZB4EFqSEVRx65nXjq1DKNJZnvTbizBBl
Carol, I love this! You've chosen an interesting POV. I really enjoyed reading your poem. It's such a rewarding feeling when the words come, when everything begins to fall into place.
Published a story called "Nothing to See Here" in Off Course, a literary rag out of the State University of New York at Albany. The story's based on an incident I witnessed a few years ago and the effect it had on the people working small businesses on that block, where I worked too.
Off Course has published several of my stories, without revision: they don't work with you; if they don't feel the story is right, they just reject it. They've published five of my stories and rejected a few as well. Oddly enough, since they are from my homeland, we correspond mostly in Spanish, although the stories are always in English.
Anyway, I don't recall where I found them, but it was probably Poets & Writers.
How lucky to be in France this summer! Enjoy. My essay “The Fastest-and Slowest-Place on Earth” was published by The Mantelpiece. Page 23 here: https://themantelpiece.org/recent-issues. It was rejected 9 times and it took a year before it found a home here - probably because it’s a little bit travel, a little bit sports, a little bit literary. This magazine was wonderful to work with and a paying market. I’m so pleased with the lovely layout and photos they chose to accompany it.
I'm in The Sun magazine! 2024 has been a dry year with nothing but rejections except for this little gem. It's a Readers Write on the topic of shaving in the July 2024 issue. Mine is the first story listed. I can't link it here because they haven't posted the online version yet.
Thanks, Dennis. I appreciate that vote of confidence. I'm betting on the competitive mags right now with wait times of up to a year. Sitting on so many stories before submitting elsewhere.
I’ve just had a creative nonfiction essay accepted to an online journal after about 25 rejections! I didn’t really change much during the submission process. This group has taught me the importance of persistence; thanks for that! I’ll post it again when it is published.
What a great feeling, congrats for believing in your piece! We'll look forward to reading it! I have a CNF flash that's up to 23 rejections. Maybe it wants me to set a personal best! ;)
I wrote it in the week after our club’s discussion about American Short Fiction and sent out to a couple places before it found a home at Litbreak - who were great to work with. I have another essay like this coming out at the end of the year and have plans to do more, but it’s not always easy to find an outlet for creative criticism.
2- I published a poem - Cloud Splitter at Truth, Beauty and Imagination
There were a few poems that I read in the Missouri Review as part of the LMRC that inspired this.
3 - I became a Volunteer Reader at The Common. Becky’s interview with The Common in January was one of my favorites and I’m super excited to be reading again!
4 - Finally my flash Alligators on Icebergs made the Wigleaf 50 Longlist. It was inspired by a whimsical story in the Cincinnati Review, also a LMRC read.
Congrats, Dave! I admire the way your narrators relate to crowds--seeking, but defying identity. Here's my favorite line from "Aliigators...": The collision will break me into a thousand pieces and the Titanic will get all the attention
After 22 rejections over the course of a year, I finally had my story "The Top of His Game" accepted by The Valparaiso Review for the Winter 2024 edition to be published in December. I had several positive rejections, so just kept plugging away. This was the very last pub I hadn't heard from, so it's not over until it's over! The story is about an aging American entrepreneur who owns a winery in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and that country's mafia is attempting to take over his business. Just have to say it's so helpful to read the accounts of everyone in this community about the various journeys they've been on to have their work published. Congrats on all the wins and near-wins as well!
Congrats on finally finding a home for your story. I have a story I love that was a finalist in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, but I want to find a publication home for it. I'll keeo tryig. Thanks for the inspiration.
First, Becky, have a great vacation in France! It's a great country and hard to find a bad restaurant.
Now, we writers hardly ever get to know how many readers we have, unless I guess you get a book on a best sellers list. But I was given a reason to suspect that hundreds of thousands of people may have read my words last month--though, alas, not as a poem or story. I've been reading newspapers for over 50 years and once in a blue moon send out a letter to the editor, never really expecting it to get published. But on Wednesday, May 22 the Wall Street Journal, with a circulation of 3.6 million [gulp!], published my letter under the title 'Leave Room for a Near-Death Experience', in which I refer to my own NDE in '71 that destroyed my former faith in secular materialism, the notion, belief really, that only matter has reality.
My story "We Hide in the Hills" was accepted as part of Speculation Publications' new anthology Grimm Retold, coming out in September. My story is a re-imagining of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The really exciting part is that Speculation has been granted rights to re-print a story by the legendary Tanith Lee from her debut collection. I kinda teared up when I learned I was going to have a story in the same volume as Tanith, tbh.
Liz, Congrats! I was trying to write something for that call. I had a Bluebeard re-telling to send, but to my surprise, discovered it (as opposed to related tales such as Fitcher's Bird) was never a Grimm tale. That's a great title. I write re-tellings of both myth and fairy tale, but I've realized I need to go back to reading original fairytales - re-tellings as a genre seem to be growing in popularity, so now journals are getting too much of the commonly-known stories and want more obscure ones. I hope being in an antho is a great experience for you - they're generally a lot of fun!
Yes! I knew it was primarily attributed to Perrault, but just assumed Grimm would have a version of it. I've got 2 re-telling poems (Bluebeard & Red Riding Hood) coming out in Heroines Anthology Vol 5 later this year. You might want to check out her annual submission calls. Just google the title & maybe add "Australia ". :)
Tanith Lee, I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of her until now and see she won the Bram Stoker Award and wrote 90 books! Congrats, yeah, I'd be psyched too!
June was a good month for me two poems out in The Beatnik Cowboy https://beatnikcowboy.com/2024/06/22/gary-grossman/ and one poem each in Streetlight https://streetlightmag.com/2024/06/21/flipping-the-switch-in-georgia-by-gary-grossman/ and Delta Poetry Review https://deltapoetryreview.com/2024jun-grossman.html . As with most poetry, at least in my experience, these poems went through several submissions prior to acceptance, and unlike most journals, the editor of Delta Poetry Review wanted some minor revisions (usually a comma out of place results in rejection). I have a short (1300 word) piece on insect declines, poetry reading, periodic cicadas, and GA's St. EOM's art installation at Pasaquan, that just came out in Salvation South https://www.salvationsouth.com/window-splat-great-southern-brood-cicada-essay-gary-grossman/ and that piece was sent to them first and the editor Chuck Reece does a bang up job of editing. With him I almost just hit "accept all changes" and be done with it <g>. Poetry rejections from a number of places (20+ submissions still out), and a high tiered reject of a CNF piece from Petigrau Rev. I hope that everyone had a satisfying and successful month!
Yeah, I can get to the home page, but none of the links into individual stories under past issues, or even current, seem to bring you to the pages. Wonder if it's me...
The links work for me. Not sure what's going on, but I always try clearing my cache and then opening and closing my browser. But you may know that already.
June has been a good month for me. "Sugar Bowl of the Universe," a hybrid essay I wrote in 2022 appeared in North Dakota Review. It took 22 tries to find its home, and the editor sent a proof sheet before publication in their print journal. I realized later that the piece can be found online at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/928315/summary. This site doesn't accurately space the poem parts of the essay, but I can live with that.
My pantoum "Human Cannonball" appeared in MUSE Literary Journal in Southern California. At first it had been declined through Submittable, so I was confused when I was then told it had been accepted. I asked the editor and was told that editors at the journal had the option to bring a piece back from the declined pile and make a case for it. I'm glad someone did.
Very exciting and fun was getting interviewed for a podcast done at Saginaw Valley State University in cooperation with the Theodore Roethke Foundation. Poet Theodore Roethke's childhood home in Saginaw is a museum that hosts an active poetry community in the area. https://open.spotify.com/episode/72dErRmjHaC6WAKqAiOSxE?si=aHRgvNsXQCSFLjjh8H5hGg Although I'd participated in open mic events and readings, I'd never been on a podcast. It was a good experience, one that I highly recommend to others.
I also had three poems accepted for Bear Review Review's next issue and another accepted by Quartet, so more on them when they appear.
Wow, what an exciting month! Your perseverance to keep submitting 22 times shows how grit pays off. And I had a declined piece in Submittable resurrected too—it was confusing at first but then very rewarding to know some editor was fighting for my work. That’s a great reminder that even when our work is rejected, we may never know the readers and editors who fought for it, who truly loved it, who may never forget a phrase they read that will stay with them. I’m rejoicing with you on this month of great things!
Ah, beautiful France, have the very best time with your family, Becky! I'm happy to join the celebration train this month with two publications that gave my heart joy.
"Brussels" in Flash Flood, a micro reflection on finding a sense of home across time and space.
Reed Magazine is 'California's oldest literary magazine' (1867), a print annual at San José State University. This current issue is only available in print, but perhaps a future digital option will be added. It's an absolutely gorgeous magazine! Full colour, such a professional layout, beautiful art and words. I submitted my piece last Sep 30-2023, it was accepted after 68 days, no editing. Payment was one contributor copy. Reed doesn't ship outside the USA, but I was able to designate a domestic address for my copy. Very proud to share my words on their pages. :)
Karin, congrats on these publications. The “Brussels” piece delivered a powerful punch in its abbreviated form. I always admire the skill required of writers to stir emotions and create a complete narrative arc in a micro piece, and you’ve given us both in this piece. Bravo. 👏🏼
First, let me say how much I love celebrating with all of you here each month and reading your work. Hearing your successes and struggles motivates me to keep going.
June has been a month of blessings. I had three pieces published and six acceptances to be published in the months ahead.
The story of my recovery from Anorexia late in life in the midst of a major depression was published in Anodyne Magazine Volume 3 (print).
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature published my essay about the life and sudden loss of my beloved father-in-law, a true southern gentleman.
Wow, I can feel YOUR story in my bones. Most people know nothing of this dark side of adopting kids with trauma/RAD. I can imagine that your experience left you with your own trauma. In the piece I wrote, I walked lightly around it since my adopted son will be reading it. I also didn’t address all the ongoing grief it’s caused my biological kids and grandkids. That’s a book waiting to be written but my chest gets tight when I think about it. Thank you for reading my work and reaching out with these words of encouragement. Blessings to you in your writing journey.
Thank you! I have trauma for so much life - it's just like that I think. But I also do a lot of healing and have a lot of post-traumatic growth (as we say now). It's hard but healing is possible. I think it's like a swinging door - we take in what we need to heal in ourselves too sometimes. I wish you every good thing on your journey! Many blessings.
I bought a copy on Amazon and then got my copy from Anodyne a week later. It’s nice to have an extra to share.
There’s no shortage of trauma, for sure. I teach a class on trauma recovery and just when I thought I’d heard it all, someone tells a story that keeps me up at night. What I’ve learned through it all is that God doesn’t waste our suffering. The same sun that melts wax will harden clay. In other words, it’s how we respond to the heat. We can become compassionate and empathetic or bitter and cold in our isolation. Taking the high road isn’t easy but it promises a richer life.
Tracie! I just read your work in Anodyne, and what an intense piece of work that is. Thank you for surviving to write it! Such a gift to be able to share it, for all of us to see how hard it is to survive this! I am a restrictor, and I have ulcerative colitis, my excuse, and this is so relatable. My heart reaches out to you!
I just read your adoption story - I too have an adoption story that could have been just like yours. We disrupted our adoption when we were threatened by Family Services to take both our children (bio and adopted). We had him adopted into a home without other young children so he could grow up as the good guy he wants to be. Also with RAD. I feel your story in my bones.
I am thrilled to share that my debut chapbook, consider the light, has been accepted by Finishing Line Press. I submitted the chapbook for FLP’s 2024 Open Chapbook Competition. The Judge, Leah Huete de Maines, selected five finalists plus some best entries for publication out of 461 entries. Mine was one of the “best entries.” You can read more about the competition and winners here: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/awards/.
I submitted this chapbook to sixteen publishers mostly for annual contests versus a direct submittal and with publishers of poetry collections I enjoyed. I began submitting last June so it took one year before being picked up by FLP. In November I received a note from one of the publishers that my manuscript made the semi-finalist round and this encouraged me to keep going.
It’s wonderful to read everyone’s work each month. Thank you for sharing and congratulations!! And may we all keep going!!
Thank you for this, Becky, and safe travels! I have 2 brags for the month of June lit-mag-wise. I also had a new play "Winners" celebrating late diagnosis autism presented at the Tank in NYC as part of PrideFest, and while it's not a lit mag, it was amazing! (See how I'm rocking the brag!) The first lit mag I'm proud to brag about is ANODYNE. https://anodynemag.com/about-anodyne-magazine/ They published my poem "Joan of Arc on a NonBinary Capsule Wardrobe." They are American out of Berlin, and they really seek to create a community. Had all the contributors on a zoom together and also did a zoom reading. So much love! AND happy to say I got paid from International Human Rights Arts Movement for their female empowerment issue for my poem "Us Girls at the Edges of the Shores" about life in the US after Dobbs... which they published with a statement about it too and some great artwork! Find them at https://humanrightsartmovement.org/ihraf-publishes/ Both poems were previously rejected. I did a bit of work on Us Girls to get it to fit nicely on the page and improved the poem at the same time - very happy I got to do that. Both editors, wonderful to work with! (And can't wait for August brags cause I got 2 into Anti-Heroin Chic! Uh-Oh -- bragging is starting to feel habit-forming.) Congrats to everyone else who has stuff to brag about!!!!!!
It's so great to see so many successes. I have a couple to share:
My essay, "My Father--a song" came out in the Summer issue of Syncopation, the Paris issue. I wrote this piece a year ago and it kind of sat, but when I saw the theme of Paris and music, I had to submit it.(with some good rewrite, of course.) (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://syncopationliteraryjournal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/k.r.-warnock-my-father-proof.pdf)
I was also accepted at two anthologies:
Pure Slush, theme of book "Death", accepted my mini-flash, "In the Courtyard." I wrote this last summer in the Smokelong Workshop.
And, most important to me, was the acceptance of my essay, "The Survivor", by Southeast Missouri State University Press collection, "Proud to Be: Writing By American Warriors, Vol.13." I've been revising bits of this piece for years. It tells the story of my response to my son being blown up by an IED in Iraq (he survived and is fine), but I feel the revised final version helps me see my growth as a writer.
Another story from my novel has found a home. This one is the first story of part two of the novel. Part one is about all the mayhem of demonstrations and political oppression that Alejandra went through in Venezuela. The second part is about my protagonist, yes a refugee, arriving in Atlanta. The Arrival was rejected 56 times. The publication, Bellingham Review accepted the story and pretty much published it as is. I completed this story in 2021, sent it out, got some rejections, workshopped it again. It went through 5 major revisions and probably 20 micro edits. The subject matter is so delicate that I had to get the psychology absolutely right. I got a lot of insights from women, and it's thanks to them the story makes any sense. Here's the link, but all kinds of trigger warnings. https://bhreview.org/articles/the-arrival/
The Bellingham Review, excellent! Good to know they take novel excerpts. I imagine the same would apply to memoirs? Thanks for the trigger warning. I think you captured the psychology and handled it well. As with all rape scenes they need to be handled delicately, especially when written by a man from a woman's POV. Intense story. Good luck.
When I sent the story to them was not as a novel excerpt, but as a full story with its own dramatic arc. The same thing I've done with other stories from the novel, since I did not develop them as chapters but independent stories. I'm glad you liked the story.
Thank you, Polly! I usually write word to word, so I mostly don't know what is coming next. I started writing the first line that Clay had short legs and I wanted it to go someplace unexpected so I added "for a donkey" and then rest sort of happened from there.
My novella-excerpt, "Systems of a Weenie" will be published in the next issue of Cult Magazine. I found them on Chill Subs. This is my first acceptance of 2024. The count so far: 80 declines, 103 stories and essays currently out. Working on a new illustrated novella, revising three other novellas, two other stories. A strange year in many ways.
It was rejected 14 times by other lit mags. I whittled it down to 2000 words to meet Defenestration's word count limit, which maybe helped with the acceptance. But I honestly think it's just too funny for the 14 lit mags that rejected it.
I also published an interview with author Taiyon Coleman in Another Chicago Review this month. That one I pitched, not submitted, to 4 places that rejected it before Another Chicago Magazine accepted my pitch.
Nice work! Particularly love the last line. Would you like to comment on the process/ratio of research and invention? If not, please just accept my congrats!
I had a short story published by The Toronto Journal this month. I had submitted the story to contests in the past with no luck and this was the first time I'd submitted it to a journal. Edits were minimal and the editors were great to work with.
Though I've had a bunch of rejections this year, it's been a great month for me! I was excited to have a piece of flash nonfiction accepted by Cleaver Magazine, a lit mag I discovered earlier this year and really admire. An earlier version of my piece, called "Guarding the Nest," won an honorable mention in a contest, but it was never published. I'd revised it since then - and had submitted to a handful of other litmags who declined it - but I'm so happy to have it accepted by Cleaver. They accepted it pending revision - and gave me a few suggestions for minor revisions, which I agreed made it stronger – and it's slated to appear in the next issue. I also had a piece of flash fiction, "Birthday," published in an anthology called Tiny Moments Vol III, published by Bronze Bird Books. This, too, had previously been declined by a handful of litmags. And earlier in the month - or perhaps at the end of last month - my not-yet-published young adult novel, The Accident, was named the YA finalist for the Tassy Walden Awards for New Voices in Children's Literature! I'm learning this month that persistence pays off :)
Hi fellow writers! My short story "Going To Be A Long Cold Winter" was published this month in issue 26 of Trajectory Journal. I got a lot of positive feedback from the editor, Chris J. Helvey and some readers. Trajectory is a completely independent literary journal that publishes poetry, prose, and artwork. For more info go to: ww.w.trajectoryjournal.com. Currently issue 26 is available in hard copy only. But you can read the editor's picks for previous issues online.
Bienvenue en France! No pubs this month (May was a blast), but 2 successful posts on my substack (https://meproctor.substack.com) - I talk about character background in the last. On the other hand I published one story a day for the "Obsession" call on Punk Noir Magazine, so, as guest editor, I bask in the talent of others! And how talented they all are ... here's the entry page, all stories in reverse order of apparition, most recent on top: https://punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/punk-noir-magazine-3/
June has been a good month. Three poems of mine just came out in the summer issue of The Georgia Review, but unfortunately I can't share them. I've been sending out poems from my forthcoming book that aren't yet published and have had two accepted this month, one by SWWIM and the other by ONE ART. I only been sending to journals that respond quickly, but now I'll start sending out poems that will be part of my third collection. Congratulations to all of you with publications this month!
I had two haiku/senryu poems published in June. “Burns Night” and “Power Company” appeared in Five Fleas (3 June 2024): https://fivefleas.blogspot.com/
This is my first publication in Five Fleas. The editor is Roberta Beach Jacobson. She works very fast: I submitted a manuscript to her on June 2, and these two poems got published online on June 3! I found such a quick response delightful after waiting over a year for some editors to get their acts together.
In June, I also received news that ten other poems will get published soon! I am especially pleased to have work forthcoming in december and Gargoyle.
Best wishes for the summer!
Sincerely,
Janet Ruth Heller
Author of the poetry books Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011); the scholarly book Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990); the middle-grade chapter book for kids The Passover Surprise (Fictive Press, 2015, 2016); and the award-winning picture book for kids about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; seventh edition 2022).
I had a poem published in the Boston-based arts magazine, The Arts Fuse. The piece was rejected a time or two before. Thanks to poetry editor John Mulrooney for taking it!
She also created and printed a bookmark that teased the story with its title/my name on the front and a quote from it on the back, a real first, so much thanks to her for that.
And this next had sort of been in and out of the submission rotation. I'd had my eye on A-Minor since forever as I just love the idea of the title and have always loved the poems they select.
As I mentioned in my own latest Substack newsletter, PAPER DRAGON's new issue includes my flash essay “At the Movies" (https://drexelpaperdragon.com/volume-7-nonfiction/). This piece was inspired by a foray last year to see the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET. It took me a long time to place, albeit with some super-encouraging rejections passes along the way. (I was just too attached to it to give up on it.) In fact, PAPER DRAGON initially “declined” it, too! But they followed up with a message saying that they’d done so in error and still wanted the piece if they could have it.
Reader, they could! (Fun fact: This isn’t the first time that a piece of mine has been officially rejected before it was accepted and published. Odd, maybe. But true. And literally just this morning I checked email to find that another outlet had rejected it—although, as the follow-the-rules type that I am, I’d already withdrawn it from that outlet’s continued consideration, and received a confirmation of the withdrawal, immediately upon the PAPER DRAGON acceptance. Once again, I’m grateful that my skin has thickened so much over the years (https://www.erikadreifus.com/publications/essays-articles/the-skin-thickens/).
My only regret is that as the production process continued I was told that it wouldn’t be possible to embed video of the key moment I’d written about (and hyperlinked) within my submission’s opening words. Since I can share that moment here, though, I invite you to come back and take a peek after you’ve read the piece: https://bit.ly/4eix1Sn.
Greetings to all - glad to hear of publication, always inspiring.
During COVID isolation years, I kept a journal and sent excerpts edited and crafted as short NF pieces around to various literary magazines in response to open calls for journal entries about how people were dealing with the pandemic in their lives. I must have sent out at least 10 different queries, every one rejected. Finally the National Womens' History Museum asked women to commit to keeping a journal and sending the writing to an archive. I sent mine in and received an acknowledgement, but I never saw my work online. Finally after a query, I received an answer from their archivist who informed me I needed to sign a release. We finished that transaction and my journal is just now online with many others. (Note: I use the pen name Goldsmith. )
(Formatting is a little funky, but the content is readable.)
Persimmon Magazine has published several of my takes on the current political situation in U.S. This month, I am one of many writing about "Election 2024: Discerning Truth in an Age of Disinformation."
After several rejections, I'm so pleased to have had a prose poem/micro-memoir published in The Cincinnati Review miCRo series:
https://www.cincinnatireview.com/micro/micro-by-night-in-sanaa-by-patricia-newberry/
That's a great journal to land in Trish. Congrats!
A wonderful prose poem - just loved how you described the refractions of stained-glass light on the skin as "bruises, brthmarks, port-wine stains" and the juxtaposition (and surprise) of the "Dracula" reference at the end with the religous imagery.
Thanks, Melissa.
I am in awe of anyone who can do micro and flash well. Brava!
Oh, Barbara, thank you.
Me too!
Trish, this is beautiful!!! Shake off those rejections and celebrate this! WOW! It’s clear that you were very intentional in making every word do its work in this micro piece. I was especially struck by “with alabaster fenestration “. I rolled that around my mouth a few times. Bravo! 🎉
Thank you so much for your kind words, Tracie. I was THRILLED by the acceptance.
Me too!
Gorgeous piece, Trish - congratulations!
Thank you, Elizabeth.
Congratulations! I love this piece. It never says what I am expecting and keeps surprising me at every turn.
Thanks, Mark.
That piece had great karma to end up where it did! Bravo!
Lev, thanks. I hadn't thought of it in terms of karma!
Years ago, an editor called the day before Thanksgiving to tell me they were dropping my book. I was devastated, but very soon sold it to a much better publisher. Karma's on my mind because it's a major theme of Shogun (1300 pages!), which I read again after seeing the new miniseries.
Congratulations, Trish! What a beautiful piece! Like Melissa, I loved " it wasn’t only the stained glass, the bruises, birthmarks and port-wine stains it cast on our skin by moonlight."
Thank you, Jane.
stunning.. thank you.
Thanks, Bernadette.
Congratulations, Trish. What a beautiful piece.
Thank you, Lori.
Transporting, gorgeous. Congratulations!
Lisa, thank you.
"a strange gospel" - wow, I love this piece! Thank you for sharing and congrats!!
Thank you, Heather.
This is a beautiful poem, Patricia, with all its unexpected couplings of dark and light: the bruise colours and moonlight; winter and ‘milder’ times; Dracula as ‘lighter’ fare.
Thanks so much, Donna.
Simply gorgeous, Trish. Memorable and lush!
Karin, thank you.
Love the bruises and stains from the stained glass at moonlight. Nice! Really evokes a special place.
Thank you, Polly.
Beautiful imagery
Thank you, Ann.
Evocative beautiful work!
Thanks so much, Emma.
The month of June has been good to me with five of my pieces taken.
First of all, Impspired published my poem “A Signal Failure”. To fully understand it some knowledge of Morse code is required, I’m afraid. The use of italics to indicate word stress is also significant. The poem can be found at https://impspired.com/2024/05/31/tony-dawson-3/
“Love of the Old” has been accepted by the Macrame Literary Journal for its summer issue.
“A Hostile Environment”, my satire on the UK’s immigration policy, was published by Lighten Up Online at https://www.lightenup-online.co.uk/index.php/issue-66-june-2024/tony-dawson-a-hostile-environment
“Paris is Always a Good Idea”, a poem written in response to a theme on Paris and music, was based on my memories of postwar Paris and published by Syncopation Literary Journal Volume 2 Issue 3 Paris, at
https://syncopationliteraryjournal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/t.-dawson-parispoem-proof.pdf
Finally, “How to Spin a Yarn”, a flash fiction piece, can be read here https://impspired.com/2024/05/31/tony-dawson-3/
It will also be collected in the Impspired print Vol. 15 in September.
All of my work was accepted without revisions, I'm happy to say.
I have so much respect and admiration for your work, Tony. I loved Signal Failure especially. It made me think of my father-in-law who was a cryptographer in WW2. He died last year at the age of 87 and he never had the mastery of language that you possess. He was the funniest person I ever knew though. My life’s goal is to be like you—to remain sharp and productive and creative right up til that moment when I meet my Creator. You are doing great things with your life, you’re leaving a beautiful legacy, and you’re blazing a trail ahead for the rest of us, showing us the way to go. Godspeed!
Thank you Tracie for your kind comment. I’m glad “Signal Failure” brought back happy memories for you. I must give my wife, who is eighteen years younger than me, the credit for keeping me alert and on my toes. She’s also so much cleverer than I am.
I agree with Melissa. You ARE a Renaissance man! Congratulations on your potpourri of literary achievements in June!!
Thank you Julie for your kind comment. It means a lot.
Congrats, Tony. That's a broad range of genres, forms & themes getting published - you're a Renaissance man!
That’s an embarrassingly flattering comment, Melissa. The thing is I’m 87 years old so, on the one hand I have a lot of “background”, let’s say, to draw on and on the other, a pressing need to write as much as I can before I pop my clogs. I still have quite a lot of work out there awaiting acceptance or rejection, but some of the more “prestigious” sites, e.g. Rattle, take an eternity to decide because they receive hundreds of submissions. However, I am extremely touched and happy to be appreciated by quality writers like you. Thank you.
I get it. I'm right there in the same process, although 75. So your 87 just keeps me going with joy and energy!
Thank you, Tony. Yes, that's a rich "memory palace" - but not every writer would have acceptance success in so many genres, so I think it's more than an age issue! Yes, Rattle is a long wait - I've given up & withdrawn from them once - lost my nerve! I'm waiting till I clock up a few more creds in journals at 10% & below acceptance rates before I submit again - unless it's an ekphrastic challenge 'cos I'm pretty experienced with that process.
I also got an essay published in Syncopation. I'll link in a full post. I really enjoyed the vibe and editor of this journal, though the website could be better. What did you think?
Natalie Welsh was delightful in her dealings with me. A pleasure to engage with. As for the website, I feel it would be churlish of me to criticize it for its simple layout, especially as I have never been able to construct a website of my own! At least, it is easy to find the contributors’ work. Admittedly, it didn’t take any effort to find mine as it was the first poem listed.
Did not mean to sound churlish! I paid someone to build my website. She was a delight to work with.
Congrats on all these publications...what an accomplishment!
Thanks, Lori. Let's hope it's not my last hurrah!
What wonderful news on these acceptances! Congrats to you!
Thanks, Heather. It's very nice to be coddled!
“A Signal Failure” is such a whimsical and clever piece, Tony. (All I can decipher from the very last line are the two ‘o’s --I once learned to spell my name in morse.) “How to Spin a Yarn” and “Hostile Environment” are both delightful and made me laugh. “Paris is a good idea” is so musical, especially when read aloud. You, and your writing, are an inspiration!
Donna what a lovely comment. The last line of "A Signal Failure" simply spells out “I love you”, appropriately enough...
Ah, yes, so appropriate. Thank you for the translation!
Congrats, Tony! Love your witty wordplay that shines through these gems. "Morse...Remorse..." No remorse on my part after taking time to read, I assure you.
Thanks, Goldie, it’s heartwarming to be appreciated. I came to writing very late in life. I happened to have my first poem, called "Lithuanian Cat’s Cradle" published by Critical Survey, in 2013 when I was 76. If you are interested, you can find it here:
https://www.proquest.com/openview/c75375663af25893b7810bcf2fa7e3ad/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=34056
I then published a couple more in 2019, but when the pandemic hit Spain, like many others, I thought it was the perfect time to apply myself to writing regularly.
Perhaps I ought to say that when I wrote that poem, I was looking back to a love affair I had when I was 36, in the early 1970s.
Congrats, Tony! That’s amazing range and production.
Thanks Dave. I think I’ll be hard-pushed to repeat a month like this one.
What a surprise of a twist (pun intended) in "How to Spin a Yarn". I enjoyed the "reportage" tone of the story, too.
I’m glad to hear that my flash fiction passed muster. You probably realized that with the name Ariadna Ragno, I was vaguely alluding to the myth of Theseus in the labyrinth and making her surname the Italian word for spider.
I confess I didn't at the time, Tony - but don't hold it against me - it was nearly 1am when I was reading it & one eye kept closing!. I'd have definitely picked up on that if I was more alert - I adore mythic allusions. :)
Congratulations, Tony—I just read and enjoyed "Paris....", felt myself swaying with the music you created in the poem. I look forward to reading more during my first relaxing day of the week today!
I’m so glad you enjoyed the Paris poem, Carol. For me it was wonderful to have the opportunity to revisit my teenage years.
I’m delighted to once again have microfiction in MoonPark Review! This was my first time being published by the same lit mag for a second time, if that makes sense. I love that they’re professional, relatively quick to respond, and take the utmost care once the work is accepted (they send proofs before the issue goes live, one of the editors does original illustrations to accompany each piece, and they promote on social media).
“Love Bites” was, appropriately, rejected 8 times before finding the right home. It goes out to all the jilted lovers: https://moonparkreview.com/issue-28-summer-2024/love-bites/
I also received my first honorable mention in a writing contest (and in life!) for my microfiction “Eternal Rest” in Exposition Review (Flash 405 contest). If you’re open to contests with fees it’s a good one—entries cost a whole $5. No simultaneous submissions, but it took them a little over month post-deadline to get back to winners and 1.5 months to notify everyone else, which was a reasonable amount of time for exclusivity in my mind. I wrote this piece specifically for the contest theme, "Home" (max word count: 405). Their current contest theme is “Persona,” for anyone interested: https://expositionreview.com/2024/05/call-for-entries-flash-405-june-2024-persona/
“Eternal Rest” is especially dedicated to the queer elders and ancestors (but I welcome people of all persuasions to read it): https://expositionreview.com/flash-405/eternal-rest/
“Love Bites” tickled me. Perhaps I’m an old trout!
Thanks, Tony! Better an old trout than a cooked one!
Congrats. I love the fresh take and cleverness of the trout piece. I spent much of my scientific career studying trout and fish for them regularly. Here's a very different sort of trout piece you might enjoy, if trout aren't just a passing fancy https://www.salvationsouth.com/will-the-rivers-still-run-blue-ridge-mountain-rivers-essay-gary-grossman/ I've submitted CNF/memoir pieces to Exposition Review and received excellent feedback with my rejections. Some day...
Gary! Thank you, and I'm honored to have you comment on this work as an actual trout expert! It's not every day I meet one of those! Your essay is a gorgeous piece of both nature and personal writing—I was right there, dipping my feet in the cool river, excited to learn about this region that I, as a Brooklynite, know little about and now want to protect. Thank you for sharing it. Re: Expo Review's excellent feedback on rejections, that's great sign! Someday indeed...
Thanks so much for the kind words. Many times I hesitate to post something directly relevant on someone else's pub post, for fear it will be interpreted as me trying to seize the moment.
In my book, that practice is all good as long as the piece is relevant, like you said, and the point is to add to the conversation versus some sort of weird oneupmanship (check and check, in your case). I enjoyed your piece and am glad you shared it.
great minds think alike! Thanks
Congrats Goldie. I really enjoyed both pieces. And I agree - there's something special about being published in a lit mag for the second time!
Thanks, Lori! Yes, it feels extra cool!
Very enjoyable story. Love the irony.
Thanks very much!
Congrats on your Honorable Mention, Goldie. That's awesome! And I enjoyed how you played with both the fish / bicycle concept and extended the fish-catching metaphor in "Love Bites" - very original. It conveyed so much about unhealthy dynamics & heartbreak in relationships, but did so in an understated manner that was all the more emotionally affecting as I read it. I liked Monpark Review's aesthetics / guidelines - adding to my "submit" list.
Thanks very much for your congrats and your close read, Melissa! And yay, MoonPark Review is super cool, they are an exciting venue to have on the to-submit list. I also love that their issues come out on the solstices and equinoxes.
"Love Bites"is such a fine and witty piece, Goldie—that wry last line is both hilarious and a shock! Congratulations on having it accepted by MoonPark Review—a fine magazine.
Thanks very much, Donna! I both cackled and was a bit shocked myself when that last line came to me.
"You were fine with your little fishy life...." Love this! (relatable) Congrats Goldie. I just had a piece accepted with MoonPark Review for Fall 2024. Your positive comments affirm what I intuitively felt about this journal and its kind editors!
Thank you, Karin! Yes, they're great! And congrats on the acceptance—excited to read the work when it comes out! What a gift to have someone make art to accompany your writing.
Never take the bait!
I always love hearing about an acceptance piece that was rejected in the past. And congrats on your first honorable mention!
Thank you, Polly! Yes, I also enjoy hearing about the journey of previously rejected work.
Re: bait, haha—but it's so hard not to take it! Those shiny lures, I tell ya!
Wow, both, Love Bites and Eternal Rest, wrenched my heart. Both deal with death in ways that are going to have me thinking all day about fairness and empathy.
High praise! Thanks so much for reading, Ann.
Love "another queer branch on the family tree" and how "the tired hits me too" - this is fabulous! Let us celebrate queerness old and new!
Thank you so much, Emma. Yes, let's!
Nice title for the Moon Park piece - I enjoyed.
Thank you, Dave!
Congratulations, Goldie! I look forward to reading all of these today!
I love the Moon Park piece!
OMG -- me too!! Amazing. I love it!!
Ahhh, thanks, Julie, I so appreciate hearing that!
Thank you so much, Nancy!
No acceptances, but I've had 4 positive rejections (This piece isn't right for us, but your story is good, please send us more) recently, so yay?
I will have 2 short memoir pieces scheduled to be published in Nifty Lit by the end of July/beginning of August, so hopefully I can provide a link then.
Looking forward to your memoir link. I write that too. And I got a tiered rejection from the Kenyon Review, saying they'd like to see more of my work!
Perseverance!! Thank goodness for those kind editors who provide encouragement and a ray of hope amidst all those mind-numbing, soul-crushing rejections we are all too familiar with!
I celebrate the positive rejections too! congratulations!
Positive rejections are definitely a yay! Looking forward to your link - I am not familiar with Nifty Lit.
Love this.
June has been full of acceptance surprises - but publications first. My shape prose poem "GirlHood" (a feminist Red Riding Hood reimagining) is now live in NonBinary Review's "Heredity" Issue (via Zoetic Press)."GirlHood" is part of a series of reimaginings I'm working on for a chapbbok, so I didn't write it especially for their call, but have been on the look-out for journals to send some out to. It was a pretty heavy-duty editing process to get the shape right for the digital edition, but the editors were great & very professional to work with. For the print journal, it's a regular block prose poem due to formatting limitations. There will also be an interview on their website (like Nicola, it's my first!) when I can catch my breath, answer the questions & send them in. Zoetic Press do a lot for their authors! There's also the "Alphanumeric" fortnightly podcast of individual pieces, & I'm patiently waiting my turn for that. Here's the digital issue link (not free, but $5 for an award-winning journal is pretty good value!)
https://www.zoeticpress.com/nonbinary-review
Acceptances were: 1.A flash fic reimagining Galatea & Pygmalion for a new themed journal called Cold Signal. The theme was the myth, & I had this story from Galatea's pov tucked away. I love Chill Subs "Where to submit this week" list, which is where I spotted the call.
2. Recipes of al things! I submitted some flash fic to anthology called "Cursed Cooking". He wanted "food horror" fiction & took reprints. I had 3 flash that happened to fit. Plus he wanted recipes for the antho. Two of my stories were shortlisted, but he ended up accepting all 5 of my recipes! (Maybe I've missed my true calling). It was a paying call - literally money for jam!
3. An erotic story for my pseudonym for a newish project - but I think I've been ghosted because I dared ask some questions about the contract. They were paying $50 for my story - so I'm pretty annoyed. They could just be closed for June - but it was mid-conversation, so I've no idea what's going on. TBC?
4. 3 poems (1 free verse, 2 hybrid pieces) were accepted to Breath & Shadow after a "limbo submission" from 2023 with no word. All 3 were on the theme of mental health - (explorations of my experience with PTSD). I finally got an email in early June explaining the former editor had passed away, but now there's someone new at the helm, so I was invited to re-submit. She accepted all 3 of my poems! They pay between $25 & $40 per piece.
C'est tout pour moi! Becky, I hope you enjoy all that fromage Francais ... maybe you could write an ode to cheese.
Congratulations, Melissa! Great month and I wish you many more.
Lisa! So lovely to see you here. Thank you for the congrats. I will email you ... 🖋😘
You know how much I admire “GirlHood,” Melissa. I’m so looking forward to reading your interview. Congratulations, too, on the acceptance for Galatea and Pygmalion, and five (!) recipes in Cursed Cooking? The journal name sends the imagination rocketing after what might be in them. I hope you haven’t been ghosted on the erotic story; that’s a horrible feeling. Fingers crossed that a response will come soon. And how great to have 3 poems accepted to Breath & Shadow after such a long wait. What an amazing month!
Hi Donna - thank you so much for your comments. Yes, the apparent (?) ghosting was / is rather strange - I only asked for clarification about a particular paragraph that was dense with if and maybe's of further uses (all unpaid, of course) for my story.
ZP are awesome - I highly recommend them as a journal to submit to. And I'm excited about my "trifecta" of accepted poems for Breath & Shadow - that's never happened to me before. One (Insomnia) is a piece I've been trying to place for over a year - I must have submitted it at least a dozen times! I slightly revised its opening this time & wonder if that made a difference.
I hope your writing is going well (I know I owe you an email!). And I'll let you know when the interview is up. :)
This is great. I will look at your pieces writing in myth. Interested in technique and process.
Thanks, Kresha. It's an intriguing genre to write in. I'm actually thinking of starting a Substack around fary tale & myth reimaginings, as it's something I'm very passionate about. For now, my profile on Chill Subs (website) has links to my published work. To direct you a little, I have a Pandora reimagining in an anthology - "Anna Karenina Isn't Dead".
Congrats! I love NonBinary Review!
Thanks, Emma. 🙂 They are great, & always seem to be looking out for their writers. The issue looks like it has some fantastic content, so I'm looking forward to reading. Have you been published with them too?
Yes they published a poem of mine a while back. I really love what they are doing - the work is always interesting to me. Placing 3 at once is awesome!
Congrats, Melissa! Terrific work!
Thanks, Dave. It's been an interesting month! 😆
Mazal tov, such a good month!
Thank you, Gary. I haven't had a chance to submit much in June, so it was nice to get all this acceptance activity! 😊
Congratulations, Melissa! What a terrific array of acceptances and publications!
Thank you, Carol. I think one week I had 6 contracts to review, including an outstanding one from May. It was pretty crazy.
Congrats on all your successes this month, Melissa! As you already know, I absolutely loved Girlhood. I look forward to reading the others (including your recipes :) You are inspiring!
Because I was traveling in late May (Amsterdam and Paris!), I didn’t get to brag. So, here goes:
My short story, “The Newcomer,” appeared in the spring issue of Folio Literary Journal and won the 2024 Fiction Prize (just got the check today!).
https://www.folioliteraryjournal.com/barbara-krasner-the-newcomer
Overall, I'd sent this piece to 20 lit mags. Fifteen rejections. I overhauled it and the title with the help of a mentor after 11 rejections. After the acceptance, I withdrew from three lit mags.
I thought the editors had ghosted me, because the acceptance email promised a follow-up email that I never received. But, in the end, after calls to their offices (at American University), I finally got a response. A bizarre process to get paid (this is a university publication, after all).
My CNF essay, “My Daily Academic Planner, 1977-1978,” about my junior year abroad in West Germany, appeared in the Vassar Review.
https://vassar-review.vassarspaces.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/VR2024_0411_DIGITAL.pdf
(scroll down to page 12 of the PDF)
The editing here was kind of brutal, and the student editors didn't quite understand that West Germany of 1977-1978, including an antisemitic incident, was not like Germany today. But I am happy with the results. The "hermit crab" essay, written in the form of a daily academic planner, was sent to three lit mags; one rejected, one accepted, and I withdrew from the third. I'd been working on this piece since last summer's retreat in Austria, but it wasn't until I found the form that the piece clicked.
These were one and dones: I’ve had two more poems accepted for the Ekphrastic Review Challenge (“The Zodiac Gallery at the Bialystoker Shul” and “Manifesto to King Leopold II), also outside the challenge, a nonfiction piece, “The Appropriation of Brueghel,” that appeared on May 25.
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/the-appropriation-of-brueghel-by-barbara-krasner
Other poetry acceptances include “My Father’s Shop-Rite as Family Portrait, 1968,” by Here: A Poetry Journal, and “Sinew,” by Minyan. I submitted to six lit mags, received four rejections and withdrew from one. I've long wanted to get into Minyan.
Another one and done: Brevity Blog published my piece, “Why I Write to Timed Prompts,” on June 18.
https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/06/18/why-i-write-to-timed-prompts/
Very cool, and congrats on the win. I have almost given up on submitting to student-run reviews, and academic reviews in general. I've just had so little success and I think they and I have an "interest-gap" or a "values-gap" or a "something-gap". Thank goodness there are so many independent reviews out there...
I think it's a cultural and generation gap. But the experience I had with Vassar Review I did not have at Folio.
Wow, Barbara. This is extremely impressive. Congratulations!
Thanks so much, Erika!
Barbara, Congratulations on all these successes! You've been busy since were last in touch! So far, I've only had a chance to read your beautiful short story, "The Newcomer," but I look forward to reading all the others. But wow - you really capture that moment in history, as well as Leo's grief. Loved your story.
Thanks so much, Lori! I'm working on a short story collection about the displaced and refugeeism. Just started a new story this week inspired by a webinar I attended hosted by the Center for Jewish History.
Powerful stuff. It deserves to win.
Thanks so much, so kind of you to say.
Congratulations and thank you for sharing so frankly, your experiences with these journals. I read your piece about prompts in Brevity, and found myself nodding...I've just recently come to appreciate timed prompts, as you say, stepping in and out of the cave! :)
Congratulations on winning the Folio fiction prize with this lovely, poignant story, Barbara! The dialogue so real, Leo’s struggles with the abyss between English spelling and pronunciation, and the way you describe how objects familiar to us, like the slinky toy, might appear to someone who has never seen them before. Leo’s journey through the past, the present, and a hinted-at future is moving and compelling. I really liked your Brueghel piece in the Ekphrastic Review, too. Prof. C. is an interesting character, portrayed so well in so few lines.
Donna, thanks so much for reading and for your kind words!
Congratulations on these successes!!
Congratulations. I love the immediacy of the scenes, the dialogue, but most especially I appreciated the newcomer's interiority. Really great.
Congratulations on the win!
Thanks! I didn't even know there was a contest. :)
Congratulations on all these, Barbara. I look forward to reading.
Enjoy France! 'Café au lait, s'il vous plait' is a necessity!
June seems to have been a popular publishing month for my submissions. I had my lighthearted 'The Godfather of Garden End' published in Glyph Lit, then 'Eleven Eleven' came out in Sophon Lit. They also did a lovely interview on me as their featured prose contributor which I've never done before and was so grateful for.
I'm also due to have 'A Very Good School' come out in Fabula Argentea tomorrow, AND Tangled Web are due to publish 'Green Fingers' soon too. It's been a VERY busy month!
I had my very first paid acceptance from Saving Daylight recently which was the icing on the cake, but now I have little left in the pipeline, it's time to focus on the novel 🙂
Congratulations, Nicola! Yes, June does seem to be bursting with acceptances and publications!
https://www.sophonlit.com/wiggins, https://glyphmag.co.uk/read-glyph/
Congratulations, Nicola. A great month!
I was happy to have an essay published in Persimmon Tree this month, after it had been rejected a couple of times at other places. They accepted it over a year before it appeared, and I thought it would never come out. It's a rather dark story about a murderer in my family! The editor made a few minor changes, which improved it I think, and I declined a couple of her other suggestions. https://persimmontree.org/summer-2024/lauras-story/
What a powerful story, Elizabeth. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Trish. I appreciate your kind words.
I just finished your essay and have to say I am gob smacked! Not just by the subject, horrible enough as it is, but by your writing, your description of what transpired and how it affected you and your family. Brava, fellow writer! And congratulations on your publication success.
Thanks so much, Julie, for your kind words. I really appreciate you taking the time to read it!
What a compelling story, Elizabeth! It is courageous of you to share it.
Thank you Donna!
Congratulations! I'll. have to look them up and give them a try, since I'm over 60!
Well it does reduce the competition a little :)
I admire the way you brought the past into the present through the context of other filicides, and how the family secrecy persisted. Congratulations!
Thank you Lisa. I imagine there are many families that have those secrets no-one talks about!
Not much success on my part this month, only rejections :( but it’s alright. Hopefully July brings something in, since it’s my birthday month!! ✨
I view rejections as success, as well—a working writer, submitting, submitting, submitting. Best wishes for your birthday month!
That’s true :) thank you ✨
Wishing you every success! And Happy Birthday!!
Thank you ✨
Best wishes for next month, Maja--for your birthday and for your writing!
Thank you ✨
I experienced the pleasure and satisfaction of three poem placements this month, as well as acceptances for two other pieces to be published later this year. One of the poems published in June was especially gratifying in that this was a reprint of a poem originally published this same month back in 2021. Love when that happens!
Here are the links to this month's publications ~
wolverine: https://lowestoftchronicle.com/issues/issue58/julieallynjohnson/
meritorious: https://oddballmagazine.com/poem-by-julie-johnson/
Outer Space: https://www.bulbculturecollective.com/read/outer-space-julie-allyn-johnson
Congratultions, Julie. I like all three poems, but especially wolverine. "milkweed and dame's rocket / engulf the springtime banks / of this swollen estuary" - I was completely hooked and, to mix my metaphors, knew I was in safe hands.
Thanks, Trish!! I'm pleased you included a 'Love Bites'-fish reference to describe your attachment to my poem. HA!!
PostScript: Sorry! Love Bites was written -- gorgeously! -- by another poet. My bad!!
All three are wonderful, Julie! The language in each engaged me immediately, and "the glory of my own starshine" lit up my morning! Congratulations!
Carol, THANK YOU!! Such kind words. I am grateful. So happy you enjoyed my poems!
Congrats, Julie. I enjoyed "Wolverine" - your description of its limbs as "abbreviated" & this wonderful question: "will I ever rise up to issue / my own guttural roar?". Great work!
Thanks, Melissa. I'm glad you liked it!!
Signed, Julie aka 'June' <evil, laughing grin!!>
Sorry Julie, I amended. I had the month's name on the brain, clearly! :D
I published a short humorous essay, "Coming to Terms," in WItcraft (thanks Doug Jacquier!). It was on May 29, but it happened after the last lit mag brag, so... https://witcraft.org/2024/05/29/coming-to-terms/
Congratulations, Rita—will read today!
I loved that essay, Rita, well done!
Congrats to all for your hard-won successes. This month:
- My essay 'Why is humour the orphan of the literary world?' was published by Brevity. https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/05/30/humour-the-orphan/ They suggested a couple of edits that I was happy to accept.
- My article '100+ Litmags Who Know How to Laugh' was featured on the SubClub Substack https://tinyurl.com/5y8amr7f
- Two of my stories, 'At the end of the word' and 'Tyger, Tyger' have made the long list for the Furphy Literary Award, which has a top prize of A$15,000. https://www.furphystory.com.au/furphy-literary-award/open-short-story-competition/
- My story 'Any Tom, Dick or Harry' was published by Masticadores in Istanbul.
https://istanbulmasticadores.wordpress.com/2024/06/26/any-tom-dick-or-harry-by-doug-jacquier/
Doug, "Any Tom, Dick, or Harry" is just great. I love the different layers of people knowing and knowing that the others know, and the ending is terrific.
Thank you, Cynthia, your comments are greatly appreciated. I've been trying to find a home for that story for over a year.
Congrats on your all your publications, Doug!
Congrats, Doug, on all. Liked the Brevity piece. Commonsense tips and market overview. A couple of writers from years gone by that I used to like are Thomas Berger (most famous for "Little Big Man") and Tom Sharpe. I'd have to revisit to see if I still got at least a chuckle from them now.
Thanks, Jon. Will have to check those two out.
Never heard of the Furphy Award. Congraultions! And on all your pubs. That's great!
Thanks, Polly. It's an Australian competition.
Forgive me for cheating a little here. I'm not too the newsletter, and as this is my first "mag brag," I thought I'd share my story "Sawdust," which is the published work I'm most proud of.
https://halfwaydownthestairs.net/2021/03/01/sawdust-by-evan-miller/
Welcome, Evan! I so enjoyed this piece, feeling haunted by the house's dilapidated atmosphere and the ghosts of all that had transpired there. And such lush descriptions! Darn right you should be proud.
Goldie - thanks so much for reading and leaving your feedback. Means a lot to have anyone take the time to do so. I really appreciate it!
Congratulations, Evan!
Thanks Donna!
Thanks, Evan. I look forward to reading, and congratulations!
Thanks Carol!
I've had good luck with the themed issues of Deep Overstock, a publication geered towards writers associated with the publishing industry, but I understand open to anyone. In their Spring "Classics" issue, they published another poem of mine (3rd time with them!) called "The Minor Keys," which is about love and music, but for me an exercise in managing a poem with zero punctuation: https://deepoverstock.com/2024/04/30/the-minor-keys-by-david-de-young/
They've been great to work with, done copy-edits only on my work. I like also that they do a regular quarterly print issue as I'm a bit old fashioned and like to see my work also on the page.
Thanks for indulging my brag! I get so few chances as it's been a slow year for acceptances.
Lovely, David! It moves so lyrically from one stanza to the next. Congratulations!
Well done! I love your poem. Congratulations!!
My "Approaching Zero" is in the spring issue of The Hudson Review: hudsonreview.com/2024/05/approaching-zero It's a poem heavily influenced by former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. I admired The Hudson Review before I started submitted poetry more than three decades ago, and it has always been at the top of my list of journals. There was no editing & there no issues--the editors were prompt and supportive. I have gotten nice Twitter feedback @amjuster.
Super work!
Thanks!
Thanks!
A great review, congrats.
Thanks!
My new book -- a novella-in-flash -- dropped Thursday in the UK. https://www.amazon.com/Hereafter-Sarah-Freligh/dp/1915247608/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DD60NQP5OKOU&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9cvgd6z5p-b1swON-FUWYw7lKuskYppl-T6Jyxo9JxdseOCCnFVv_c1yB57koYv0BouHsuZy9EhqHoR9UWzVN092PANMFlhOFB6eVF0YIf2sRx-zlBt8zulrknpyVzRM2BhyNbcRHZB4f1TTWSRQoQ.54BufqHzwDhnrNbCwiCR2bPUiA23hCJCYE34Mhy-6IA&dib_tag=se&keywords=sarah+freligh&qid=1719668377&sprefix=freligh%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-1
Congrats.
Congrats on your book, Sarah!
Thanks, Dave!
Mazal tov.
Congratulations, Sarah - & that's an intriguing cross-genre you've chosen. (Amazon do have annoyingly long links, don't they?) Best wishes for its success! Might I ask what its premise is?
Congratulations!
Apologize for the long link.
Apparently not unusually for the LIT MAG NEWS community, June was an oddly acceptance-full month, with nine poems accepted from four lit mags and one anthology. None available online right now, but two posted with permission at my Facebook feed, which I'll post at the end, and the rest coming during the summer and early fall.
My favorite acceptance was a poem whose idea has been with me since a trip to Italy in 2011, when I became fascinated with the unfinished sculptures of Michelangelo in the hallway "enroute" to seeing the David. Many revisions during the journey to completing it to my satisfaction resulted in sixteen rejections, with revisions again after each, until I found the voice I wanted. When I found it, the details and stanzas fell into place. Synkroniciti accepted "I'm Not 'David' " for their "Vulnerable"-themed issue, which is out now. The visuals are wonderful, with a black background and the stone unfinished sculpture, "Young Slave" in two views that truly complement the poem. It was a pleasure to work with the editor, Katherine McDaniel. https://www.facebook.com/carol.grannick/posts/pfbid0J2yCgNA6GdjZG6yJLePZGp1bistaGJCtNZB4EFqSEVRx65nXjq1DKNJZnvTbizBBl
Kudos on all those acceptances!
Thank you, Erika!
Congratulations, Carol. I hope you'll post again when they're published - I'm no longer on Facebook.
Will do - thanks, Trish!
Carol, I love this! You've chosen an interesting POV. I really enjoyed reading your poem. It's such a rewarding feeling when the words come, when everything begins to fall into place.
Congratulations!
Thanks so much, Julie!
Cheers on an acceptance filled month!
Thank you, Dave!
Published a story called "Nothing to See Here" in Off Course, a literary rag out of the State University of New York at Albany. The story's based on an incident I witnessed a few years ago and the effect it had on the people working small businesses on that block, where I worked too.
The link: https://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue97/risemberg.html
Off Course has published several of my stories, without revision: they don't work with you; if they don't feel the story is right, they just reject it. They've published five of my stories and rejected a few as well. Oddly enough, since they are from my homeland, we correspond mostly in Spanish, although the stories are always in English.
Anyway, I don't recall where I found them, but it was probably Poets & Writers.
Thanks!
Congrats, it's a good review that's been around a long time. I've submitted and been rejected by them once. Not trying to steal your thunder, but they did publish a review of my first book https://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue96/mladinic_peter_review.html
Thunder not stolen. This is the brag page, after all. Congrats!
That's maybe your home journal Becky wrote about earlier this week?
How lucky to be in France this summer! Enjoy. My essay “The Fastest-and Slowest-Place on Earth” was published by The Mantelpiece. Page 23 here: https://themantelpiece.org/recent-issues. It was rejected 9 times and it took a year before it found a home here - probably because it’s a little bit travel, a little bit sports, a little bit literary. This magazine was wonderful to work with and a paying market. I’m so pleased with the lovely layout and photos they chose to accompany it.
Looking forward to reading this morning! Congratulations on an all-around good experience and getting paid!
Congratulations! This was interesting!
Thank you!
I'm in The Sun magazine! 2024 has been a dry year with nothing but rejections except for this little gem. It's a Readers Write on the topic of shaving in the July 2024 issue. Mine is the first story listed. I can't link it here because they haven't posted the online version yet.
Congrats, Polly! The Sun, amazing! Intrigued by that topic...
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-shaving
Congratulations Polly. I know you work hard at your craft.
Thanks, Dennis. I appreciate that vote of confidence. I'm betting on the competitive mags right now with wait times of up to a year. Sitting on so many stories before submitting elsewhere.
I hear that.
Congratulations, Polly!
Thanks Trish!
Wow. The Sun. I am jealous. Congrats.
It helps to balance out the dry spell.
Polly, this is fab! The SUN! I look forward to seeing your story!
Here it is!
https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-shaving
I’ve just had a creative nonfiction essay accepted to an online journal after about 25 rejections! I didn’t really change much during the submission process. This group has taught me the importance of persistence; thanks for that! I’ll post it again when it is published.
That's amazing. Congrats! I admire your persistence.
Persistence does count. My Sugar Bowl of the Universe memoir/hybrid essay took 22 rejections over 2 years before finding its home.
Congratulations, Kate. Yes, sometimes you just have to keep sending it out. Look forward to reading.
What a great feeling, congrats for believing in your piece! We'll look forward to reading it! I have a CNF flash that's up to 23 rejections. Maybe it wants me to set a personal best! ;)
Karen don’t give up!
I won't give up! The numbers are high because I'm aiming high! :)
Enjoy France! Coincidentally my brag this month is all connected to Lit Mag News!
1 - Last week I published my essay Every Man A Misfit at Litbreak. This came straight out of Becky’s Lit Mag Reading Club.
https://litbreak.com/every-man-a-misfit/
I wrote it in the week after our club’s discussion about American Short Fiction and sent out to a couple places before it found a home at Litbreak - who were great to work with. I have another essay like this coming out at the end of the year and have plans to do more, but it’s not always easy to find an outlet for creative criticism.
2- I published a poem - Cloud Splitter at Truth, Beauty and Imagination
https://atiquemr9.blogspot.com/2024/05/tahawus-cloud-splitter.html
There were a few poems that I read in the Missouri Review as part of the LMRC that inspired this.
3 - I became a Volunteer Reader at The Common. Becky’s interview with The Common in January was one of my favorites and I’m super excited to be reading again!
4 - Finally my flash Alligators on Icebergs made the Wigleaf 50 Longlist. It was inspired by a whimsical story in the Cincinnati Review, also a LMRC read.
https://prsmmnlit.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/dave-nash/
Congrats, Dave! I admire the way your narrators relate to crowds--seeking, but defying identity. Here's my favorite line from "Aliigators...": The collision will break me into a thousand pieces and the Titanic will get all the attention
Thanks, Lisa!
Hurray!
Haven't heard of Litbreak so thanks for posting.
I had a short story published in Litbreak about 18 months ago. They were great to work with!
After 22 rejections over the course of a year, I finally had my story "The Top of His Game" accepted by The Valparaiso Review for the Winter 2024 edition to be published in December. I had several positive rejections, so just kept plugging away. This was the very last pub I hadn't heard from, so it's not over until it's over! The story is about an aging American entrepreneur who owns a winery in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and that country's mafia is attempting to take over his business. Just have to say it's so helpful to read the accounts of everyone in this community about the various journeys they've been on to have their work published. Congrats on all the wins and near-wins as well!
Congrats on finally finding a home for your story. I have a story I love that was a finalist in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, but I want to find a publication home for it. I'll keeo tryig. Thanks for the inspiration.
Congratulations!! I look forward to reading it.
First, Becky, have a great vacation in France! It's a great country and hard to find a bad restaurant.
Now, we writers hardly ever get to know how many readers we have, unless I guess you get a book on a best sellers list. But I was given a reason to suspect that hundreds of thousands of people may have read my words last month--though, alas, not as a poem or story. I've been reading newspapers for over 50 years and once in a blue moon send out a letter to the editor, never really expecting it to get published. But on Wednesday, May 22 the Wall Street Journal, with a circulation of 3.6 million [gulp!], published my letter under the title 'Leave Room for a Near-Death Experience', in which I refer to my own NDE in '71 that destroyed my former faith in secular materialism, the notion, belief really, that only matter has reality.
That is so cool! Congrats! I sent an op ed piece to the Washington Post. They gave me a personal rejection and told me to be safe!
My story "We Hide in the Hills" was accepted as part of Speculation Publications' new anthology Grimm Retold, coming out in September. My story is a re-imagining of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The really exciting part is that Speculation has been granted rights to re-print a story by the legendary Tanith Lee from her debut collection. I kinda teared up when I learned I was going to have a story in the same volume as Tanith, tbh.
Liz, Congrats! I was trying to write something for that call. I had a Bluebeard re-telling to send, but to my surprise, discovered it (as opposed to related tales such as Fitcher's Bird) was never a Grimm tale. That's a great title. I write re-tellings of both myth and fairy tale, but I've realized I need to go back to reading original fairytales - re-tellings as a genre seem to be growing in popularity, so now journals are getting too much of the commonly-known stories and want more obscure ones. I hope being in an antho is a great experience for you - they're generally a lot of fun!
I know! It’s so weird when you find out something is a Perrault vs a Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, right?
Yes! I knew it was primarily attributed to Perrault, but just assumed Grimm would have a version of it. I've got 2 re-telling poems (Bluebeard & Red Riding Hood) coming out in Heroines Anthology Vol 5 later this year. You might want to check out her annual submission calls. Just google the title & maybe add "Australia ". :)
Sounds like a fabulous re-telling - congratulations!
Tanith Lee, I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of her until now and see she won the Bram Stoker Award and wrote 90 books! Congrats, yeah, I'd be psyched too!
June was a good month for me two poems out in The Beatnik Cowboy https://beatnikcowboy.com/2024/06/22/gary-grossman/ and one poem each in Streetlight https://streetlightmag.com/2024/06/21/flipping-the-switch-in-georgia-by-gary-grossman/ and Delta Poetry Review https://deltapoetryreview.com/2024jun-grossman.html . As with most poetry, at least in my experience, these poems went through several submissions prior to acceptance, and unlike most journals, the editor of Delta Poetry Review wanted some minor revisions (usually a comma out of place results in rejection). I have a short (1300 word) piece on insect declines, poetry reading, periodic cicadas, and GA's St. EOM's art installation at Pasaquan, that just came out in Salvation South https://www.salvationsouth.com/window-splat-great-southern-brood-cicada-essay-gary-grossman/ and that piece was sent to them first and the editor Chuck Reece does a bang up job of editing. With him I almost just hit "accept all changes" and be done with it <g>. Poetry rejections from a number of places (20+ submissions still out), and a high tiered reject of a CNF piece from Petigrau Rev. I hope that everyone had a satisfying and successful month!
I liked working with Streetlight. Had a story published there in the Dec. '23 issue under my pen name called "Second Marriage."
I really like the review and editors. This is my second pub there and I have a third submission being processed.
What’s up with their site? Every link is taking me to a Can not Find page.
Not sure, I'm not having trouble, this link worked for me https://streetlightmag.com/
Yeah, I can get to the home page, but none of the links into individual stories under past issues, or even current, seem to bring you to the pages. Wonder if it's me...
The links work for me. Not sure what's going on, but I always try clearing my cache and then opening and closing my browser. But you may know that already.
June has been a good month for me. "Sugar Bowl of the Universe," a hybrid essay I wrote in 2022 appeared in North Dakota Review. It took 22 tries to find its home, and the editor sent a proof sheet before publication in their print journal. I realized later that the piece can be found online at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/928315/summary. This site doesn't accurately space the poem parts of the essay, but I can live with that.
My pantoum "Human Cannonball" appeared in MUSE Literary Journal in Southern California. At first it had been declined through Submittable, so I was confused when I was then told it had been accepted. I asked the editor and was told that editors at the journal had the option to bring a piece back from the declined pile and make a case for it. I'm glad someone did.
Very exciting and fun was getting interviewed for a podcast done at Saginaw Valley State University in cooperation with the Theodore Roethke Foundation. Poet Theodore Roethke's childhood home in Saginaw is a museum that hosts an active poetry community in the area. https://open.spotify.com/episode/72dErRmjHaC6WAKqAiOSxE?si=aHRgvNsXQCSFLjjh8H5hGg Although I'd participated in open mic events and readings, I'd never been on a podcast. It was a good experience, one that I highly recommend to others.
I also had three poems accepted for Bear Review Review's next issue and another accepted by Quartet, so more on them when they appear.
Wow, what an exciting month! Your perseverance to keep submitting 22 times shows how grit pays off. And I had a declined piece in Submittable resurrected too—it was confusing at first but then very rewarding to know some editor was fighting for my work. That’s a great reminder that even when our work is rejected, we may never know the readers and editors who fought for it, who truly loved it, who may never forget a phrase they read that will stay with them. I’m rejoicing with you on this month of great things!
Yes, that's great inspiration. 22 times!
Ah, beautiful France, have the very best time with your family, Becky! I'm happy to join the celebration train this month with two publications that gave my heart joy.
"Brussels" in Flash Flood, a micro reflection on finding a sense of home across time and space.
https://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/2024/06/brussels-by-karin-hedetniemi.html
"Waymarker Near Briallos" in Reed Magazine, a CNF flash about a metaphysical experience (flash of grief) I had while walking the Portuguese Camino.
https://www.reedmag.org/product-page/reed-magazine-issue-157
Reed Magazine is 'California's oldest literary magazine' (1867), a print annual at San José State University. This current issue is only available in print, but perhaps a future digital option will be added. It's an absolutely gorgeous magazine! Full colour, such a professional layout, beautiful art and words. I submitted my piece last Sep 30-2023, it was accepted after 68 days, no editing. Payment was one contributor copy. Reed doesn't ship outside the USA, but I was able to designate a domestic address for my copy. Very proud to share my words on their pages. :)
Karin, congrats on these publications. The “Brussels” piece delivered a powerful punch in its abbreviated form. I always admire the skill required of writers to stir emotions and create a complete narrative arc in a micro piece, and you’ve given us both in this piece. Bravo. 👏🏼
Tracie, thank you for reading me with such kindness! xx
First, let me say how much I love celebrating with all of you here each month and reading your work. Hearing your successes and struggles motivates me to keep going.
June has been a month of blessings. I had three pieces published and six acceptances to be published in the months ahead.
The story of my recovery from Anorexia late in life in the midst of a major depression was published in Anodyne Magazine Volume 3 (print).
The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature published my essay about the life and sudden loss of my beloved father-in-law, a true southern gentleman.
https://deadmule.com/tracie-adams-i-guess-well-never-know/
Bright Flash Literary Review published my flash piece about my adoption journey, which is a mission field you never leave.
https://brightflash1000.com/2024/06/05/long-road-home/
We can’t all be in Paris 😋 but have a blessed weekend wherever you are!
I look forward to reading all of this! We're in Anodyne together. Congratulations on all of it!
So nice to meet a fellow Anodyne family member 😃. Which volume are you published in, and what was the name of your piece?
Wow, I can feel YOUR story in my bones. Most people know nothing of this dark side of adopting kids with trauma/RAD. I can imagine that your experience left you with your own trauma. In the piece I wrote, I walked lightly around it since my adopted son will be reading it. I also didn’t address all the ongoing grief it’s caused my biological kids and grandkids. That’s a book waiting to be written but my chest gets tight when I think about it. Thank you for reading my work and reaching out with these words of encouragement. Blessings to you in your writing journey.
Thank you! I have trauma for so much life - it's just like that I think. But I also do a lot of healing and have a lot of post-traumatic growth (as we say now). It's hard but healing is possible. I think it's like a swinging door - we take in what we need to heal in ourselves too sometimes. I wish you every good thing on your journey! Many blessings.
this one - number 3 I think - with a short poem, Joan of Arc on a NonBinary Capsule Wardrobe
Oh my goodness, Emma, just read it. Such striking imagery. “Always carry a sword outside”—brilliant!
Thank you! I will look for yours - I only have the document, they didn't send me anything (yet)
I bought a copy on Amazon and then got my copy from Anodyne a week later. It’s nice to have an extra to share.
There’s no shortage of trauma, for sure. I teach a class on trauma recovery and just when I thought I’d heard it all, someone tells a story that keeps me up at night. What I’ve learned through it all is that God doesn’t waste our suffering. The same sun that melts wax will harden clay. In other words, it’s how we respond to the heat. We can become compassionate and empathetic or bitter and cold in our isolation. Taking the high road isn’t easy but it promises a richer life.
Tracie! I just read your work in Anodyne, and what an intense piece of work that is. Thank you for surviving to write it! Such a gift to be able to share it, for all of us to see how hard it is to survive this! I am a restrictor, and I have ulcerative colitis, my excuse, and this is so relatable. My heart reaches out to you!
I just read your adoption story - I too have an adoption story that could have been just like yours. We disrupted our adoption when we were threatened by Family Services to take both our children (bio and adopted). We had him adopted into a home without other young children so he could grow up as the good guy he wants to be. Also with RAD. I feel your story in my bones.
Wow, had never heard of the Dead Mule School, but it's right up my alley and your story was great. Thanks for posting!
Thanks, Gary. And yes, I highly recommend working with the Dead Mule. Their editors were awesome, and I have a fondness for southern mags. Good luck!
What a beautiful tribute to your father-in-law.
Thanks, Polly. ☺️
Have the most fabulous time in France, Becky!!
I am thrilled to share that my debut chapbook, consider the light, has been accepted by Finishing Line Press. I submitted the chapbook for FLP’s 2024 Open Chapbook Competition. The Judge, Leah Huete de Maines, selected five finalists plus some best entries for publication out of 461 entries. Mine was one of the “best entries.” You can read more about the competition and winners here: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/awards/.
I submitted this chapbook to sixteen publishers mostly for annual contests versus a direct submittal and with publishers of poetry collections I enjoyed. I began submitting last June so it took one year before being picked up by FLP. In November I received a note from one of the publishers that my manuscript made the semi-finalist round and this encouraged me to keep going.
It’s wonderful to read everyone’s work each month. Thank you for sharing and congratulations!! And may we all keep going!!
Thank you for this, Becky, and safe travels! I have 2 brags for the month of June lit-mag-wise. I also had a new play "Winners" celebrating late diagnosis autism presented at the Tank in NYC as part of PrideFest, and while it's not a lit mag, it was amazing! (See how I'm rocking the brag!) The first lit mag I'm proud to brag about is ANODYNE. https://anodynemag.com/about-anodyne-magazine/ They published my poem "Joan of Arc on a NonBinary Capsule Wardrobe." They are American out of Berlin, and they really seek to create a community. Had all the contributors on a zoom together and also did a zoom reading. So much love! AND happy to say I got paid from International Human Rights Arts Movement for their female empowerment issue for my poem "Us Girls at the Edges of the Shores" about life in the US after Dobbs... which they published with a statement about it too and some great artwork! Find them at https://humanrightsartmovement.org/ihraf-publishes/ Both poems were previously rejected. I did a bit of work on Us Girls to get it to fit nicely on the page and improved the poem at the same time - very happy I got to do that. Both editors, wonderful to work with! (And can't wait for August brags cause I got 2 into Anti-Heroin Chic! Uh-Oh -- bragging is starting to feel habit-forming.) Congrats to everyone else who has stuff to brag about!!!!!!
That first publication in a lit mag is magical. Congrats!
Thank you Polly, but these are not my first although I do feel as if I'm only just now getting started...
It's so great to see so many successes. I have a couple to share:
My essay, "My Father--a song" came out in the Summer issue of Syncopation, the Paris issue. I wrote this piece a year ago and it kind of sat, but when I saw the theme of Paris and music, I had to submit it.(with some good rewrite, of course.) (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://syncopationliteraryjournal.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/k.r.-warnock-my-father-proof.pdf)
I was also accepted at two anthologies:
Pure Slush, theme of book "Death", accepted my mini-flash, "In the Courtyard." I wrote this last summer in the Smokelong Workshop.
And, most important to me, was the acceptance of my essay, "The Survivor", by Southeast Missouri State University Press collection, "Proud to Be: Writing By American Warriors, Vol.13." I've been revising bits of this piece for years. It tells the story of my response to my son being blown up by an IED in Iraq (he survived and is fine), but I feel the revised final version helps me see my growth as a writer.
My heart skipped a couple of beats in the middle of that last paragraph, Kresha. I'm so relieved that your son is fine.
Another story from my novel has found a home. This one is the first story of part two of the novel. Part one is about all the mayhem of demonstrations and political oppression that Alejandra went through in Venezuela. The second part is about my protagonist, yes a refugee, arriving in Atlanta. The Arrival was rejected 56 times. The publication, Bellingham Review accepted the story and pretty much published it as is. I completed this story in 2021, sent it out, got some rejections, workshopped it again. It went through 5 major revisions and probably 20 micro edits. The subject matter is so delicate that I had to get the psychology absolutely right. I got a lot of insights from women, and it's thanks to them the story makes any sense. Here's the link, but all kinds of trigger warnings. https://bhreview.org/articles/the-arrival/
The Bellingham Review, excellent! Good to know they take novel excerpts. I imagine the same would apply to memoirs? Thanks for the trigger warning. I think you captured the psychology and handled it well. As with all rape scenes they need to be handled delicately, especially when written by a man from a woman's POV. Intense story. Good luck.
When I sent the story to them was not as a novel excerpt, but as a full story with its own dramatic arc. The same thing I've done with other stories from the novel, since I did not develop them as chapters but independent stories. I'm glad you liked the story.
I most recently had a tiny story in Tiny Molecules about a sad donkey: https://www.tinymolecules.com/issues/nineteen#brian-mihok
Tiny Molecules, that's a great lit mag for flash. Congrats. Sweet piece. How'd it come to you?
Thank you, Polly! I usually write word to word, so I mostly don't know what is coming next. I started writing the first line that Clay had short legs and I wanted it to go someplace unexpected so I added "for a donkey" and then rest sort of happened from there.
It is a wonderful story! I love the way you get to the problem so visually.
Emma! Thank you!
Love Tiny Molecules, loved your sad donkey story. Awww.
thank you, Karin!
My novella-excerpt, "Systems of a Weenie" will be published in the next issue of Cult Magazine. I found them on Chill Subs. This is my first acceptance of 2024. The count so far: 80 declines, 103 stories and essays currently out. Working on a new illustrated novella, revising three other novellas, two other stories. A strange year in many ways.
Congrats to all the Lit Mag friends posting good news! I have 2 publications to share:
Defenestration published my humorous CNF piece "Cello Champion" this week.
https://www.defenestrationmag.net/2024/06/cello-champion-by-deborah-copperud/
It was rejected 14 times by other lit mags. I whittled it down to 2000 words to meet Defenestration's word count limit, which maybe helped with the acceptance. But I honestly think it's just too funny for the 14 lit mags that rejected it.
I also published an interview with author Taiyon Coleman in Another Chicago Review this month. That one I pitched, not submitted, to 4 places that rejected it before Another Chicago Magazine accepted my pitch.
https://anotherchicagomagazine.net/2024/06/13/how-far-an-interview-with-taiyon-coleman-about-her-essay-collection-traveling-without-moving-essays-from-a-black-woman-trying-to-survive-in-america/
Here is my short story, "When Marilyn Monroe's Psychotherapist Asks About Her Childhood," in the June 27 online issue of failbetter. I found this journal through Submitit's Journal List option (thanks for the intro to Erik, Becky!) It was placed fairly quickly. Only one minor edit. Great experience. https://www.failbetter.com/content/when-marilyn-monroe%E2%80%99s-psychotherapist-asks-about-her-childhood
Nice work! Particularly love the last line. Would you like to comment on the process/ratio of research and invention? If not, please just accept my congrats!
You are so kind - thank you!
This is a wonderful story! I am so moved by it all the way through, her longing is so palpable.
I had a short story published by The Toronto Journal this month. I had submitted the story to contests in the past with no luck and this was the first time I'd submitted it to a journal. Edits were minimal and the editors were great to work with.
https://torontojournal.com/issue4-if/
Though I've had a bunch of rejections this year, it's been a great month for me! I was excited to have a piece of flash nonfiction accepted by Cleaver Magazine, a lit mag I discovered earlier this year and really admire. An earlier version of my piece, called "Guarding the Nest," won an honorable mention in a contest, but it was never published. I'd revised it since then - and had submitted to a handful of other litmags who declined it - but I'm so happy to have it accepted by Cleaver. They accepted it pending revision - and gave me a few suggestions for minor revisions, which I agreed made it stronger – and it's slated to appear in the next issue. I also had a piece of flash fiction, "Birthday," published in an anthology called Tiny Moments Vol III, published by Bronze Bird Books. This, too, had previously been declined by a handful of litmags. And earlier in the month - or perhaps at the end of last month - my not-yet-published young adult novel, The Accident, was named the YA finalist for the Tassy Walden Awards for New Voices in Children's Literature! I'm learning this month that persistence pays off :)
Hi fellow writers! My short story "Going To Be A Long Cold Winter" was published this month in issue 26 of Trajectory Journal. I got a lot of positive feedback from the editor, Chris J. Helvey and some readers. Trajectory is a completely independent literary journal that publishes poetry, prose, and artwork. For more info go to: ww.w.trajectoryjournal.com. Currently issue 26 is available in hard copy only. But you can read the editor's picks for previous issues online.
Brian, the link didn’t work. In case you want to repost…
Thanks Andrea! I'll see if I can find a better link for them.
Bienvenue en France! No pubs this month (May was a blast), but 2 successful posts on my substack (https://meproctor.substack.com) - I talk about character background in the last. On the other hand I published one story a day for the "Obsession" call on Punk Noir Magazine, so, as guest editor, I bask in the talent of others! And how talented they all are ... here's the entry page, all stories in reverse order of apparition, most recent on top: https://punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/punk-noir-magazine-3/
June has been a good month. Three poems of mine just came out in the summer issue of The Georgia Review, but unfortunately I can't share them. I've been sending out poems from my forthcoming book that aren't yet published and have had two accepted this month, one by SWWIM and the other by ONE ART. I only been sending to journals that respond quickly, but now I'll start sending out poems that will be part of my third collection. Congratulations to all of you with publications this month!
My flash piece 'Eleanor' got published in issue 103 of miniMAG.
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/949ffb49-d4ef-4d41-99d5-87223f7a1707/downloads/miniMAG%20Issue103.pdf?ver=1718975611160
Dear Colleagues,
Congratulations on your new publications!
I had two haiku/senryu poems published in June. “Burns Night” and “Power Company” appeared in Five Fleas (3 June 2024): https://fivefleas.blogspot.com/
This is my first publication in Five Fleas. The editor is Roberta Beach Jacobson. She works very fast: I submitted a manuscript to her on June 2, and these two poems got published online on June 3! I found such a quick response delightful after waiting over a year for some editors to get their acts together.
In June, I also received news that ten other poems will get published soon! I am especially pleased to have work forthcoming in december and Gargoyle.
Best wishes for the summer!
Sincerely,
Janet Ruth Heller
Author of the poetry books Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011); the scholarly book Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990); the middle-grade chapter book for kids The Passover Surprise (Fictive Press, 2015, 2016); and the award-winning picture book for kids about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; seventh edition 2022).
My website is https://www.janetruthheller.com/
I had a poem published in the Boston-based arts magazine, The Arts Fuse. The piece was rejected a time or two before. Thanks to poetry editor John Mulrooney for taking it!
https://artsfuse.org/tag/anthony-robinson/
This month, I was interviewed about the story I had in Feign Literary Magazine last month. Interview done by the editor Kylie MW Rybak.
Story: https://www.feignlit.com/featured/theonesthatgetaway
Interview: https://www.feignlit.com/jon-fain-interview
She also created and printed a bookmark that teased the story with its title/my name on the front and a quote from it on the back, a real first, so much thanks to her for that.
I was excited to have a pair of poems appear online this month. This first one in One Art I'd submitted in one version or another since 2018:
https://oneartpoetry.com/2024/06/11/span-by-jeff-mcrae/
And this next had sort of been in and out of the submission rotation. I'd had my eye on A-Minor since forever as I just love the idea of the title and have always loved the poems they select.
https://aminormagazine.com/2024/05/31/crowned/
Enjoy your séjour en France, Becky!
As I mentioned in my own latest Substack newsletter, PAPER DRAGON's new issue includes my flash essay “At the Movies" (https://drexelpaperdragon.com/volume-7-nonfiction/). This piece was inspired by a foray last year to see the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET. It took me a long time to place, albeit with some super-encouraging rejections passes along the way. (I was just too attached to it to give up on it.) In fact, PAPER DRAGON initially “declined” it, too! But they followed up with a message saying that they’d done so in error and still wanted the piece if they could have it.
Reader, they could! (Fun fact: This isn’t the first time that a piece of mine has been officially rejected before it was accepted and published. Odd, maybe. But true. And literally just this morning I checked email to find that another outlet had rejected it—although, as the follow-the-rules type that I am, I’d already withdrawn it from that outlet’s continued consideration, and received a confirmation of the withdrawal, immediately upon the PAPER DRAGON acceptance. Once again, I’m grateful that my skin has thickened so much over the years (https://www.erikadreifus.com/publications/essays-articles/the-skin-thickens/).
My only regret is that as the production process continued I was told that it wouldn’t be possible to embed video of the key moment I’d written about (and hyperlinked) within my submission’s opening words. Since I can share that moment here, though, I invite you to come back and take a peek after you’ve read the piece: https://bit.ly/4eix1Sn.
Greetings to all - glad to hear of publication, always inspiring.
During COVID isolation years, I kept a journal and sent excerpts edited and crafted as short NF pieces around to various literary magazines in response to open calls for journal entries about how people were dealing with the pandemic in their lives. I must have sent out at least 10 different queries, every one rejected. Finally the National Womens' History Museum asked women to commit to keeping a journal and sending the writing to an archive. I sent mine in and received an acknowledgement, but I never saw my work online. Finally after a query, I received an answer from their archivist who informed me I needed to sign a release. We finished that transaction and my journal is just now online with many others. (Note: I use the pen name Goldsmith. )
https://journals.womenshistory.org/journal/6655045593d75643de798d1b
(Formatting is a little funky, but the content is readable.)
Persimmon Magazine has published several of my takes on the current political situation in U.S. This month, I am one of many writing about "Election 2024: Discerning Truth in an Age of Disinformation."
"Advice"
https://persimmontree.org/summer-2024/election-2024/
have a wonderful, sunny month..