Lit Mag Roads, Take Me Home!

Passing of Epoch Editor; update from Redivider; CLMP Firecracker Awards; submitting advice from editors; jobs at The Yale Review, The Stinging Fly & LARB; 300 + markets and more

Jun 06, 2022

Greetings Lit Magnates,

I begin with sad news. Last week, Michael Claude Koch, Editor of Epoch, passed away. According to his obituary, Koch is noted for “having returned the Cornell literary journal, Epoch, to national prominence…In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Epoch magazine at Cornell.” He was 75 years old. My condolences to those of you who knew him. It is unclear at this time who will take over as the magazine’s new editor.

Shifting gears to something positive, I’ve been in touch with the editors of Redivider, whose seeming disappearance I reported on a few weeks ago. I can now confirm that the magazine is still going strong. I am pleased to share this note, passed along to me by one of the editors.

From the Editors of Redivider:
Hello to our former contributors and readers (and future contributors)! We are pleased to let you know that we have a new URL at https://redivider.emerson.edu.
We moved over to Emerson’s servers in order to make upkeep easier. Because of that, we needed a new domain and we had to completely redo our website. We are still publishing 19.2, but it will be delayed due to technical issues and a team overhaul.
We will also be cataloging all digital back issues this summer for our former contributors to share!
We are so excited to start this new journey with you, and we apologize for the transition. You can expect a lot more from us in the upcoming months.
Sincerely,
Laur Fitch, Editor in Chief
Christopher Wilson, Fiction Editor

Also in the realm of positive developments, The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses has announced finalists for its eighth annual Firecracker Awards, which are “given for…the best literary magazines in the categories of debut and general excellence.” Finalists this year in General Excellence are The American Poetry Review,
Bellevue Literary Review, Chicago Review, The Evergreen Review and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Finalists for Best Debut are Brink
Inverted Syntax, Islandia Journal, Nowruz Journal and SISTORIES.

Meanwhile, Terrain.org has launched a book contest, The Sowell Collection Emerging Writers Prize. “For the Sowell Emerging Writers Prize we are especially interested in books that explore the relationship between human communities and nature. Our first call for submissions is for nonfiction, a genre that may be informed by both scientific inquiry and personal experience.”

If you live in Ohio, you might be interested in this opportunity from the Ohio Center for the Book to have your work in progress critiqued by an editor or agent. “After a competitive selection process, work chosen for inclusion will be read and/or discussed in a future Page Count episode, all with the goal of offering Ohio writers constructive feedback and demystifying the submission process.”

For the rest of you looking for submission advice, a lot of insights showed up on Twitter recently. Here are some tips from the Editor of Conjunctions on how to format work and what to mention in your cover letter:

K Chiucarello @kchiucarello

I have started descending the @conjunctions queue and want to thread things that help me, an editor, help you, the writer.

Here is a reminder from the Editor of Split Lip on the importance of titles:

Maureen Langloss @MaureenLangloss

One big thing I've learned from working at a lit mag is how important titles are. Good ones really help you stand out & heighten the reader's excitement to dive into the submission. It predisposes the reader to like the piece & sometimes even means you get read faster.

And here is an editor at The Rumpus discussing what he wished more writers knew before submitting:

Davon Loeb @LoebDavon

If you’re an editor at a literary magazine/journal, what is something you wish writers knew before submitting? I wish writers knew the amount of time between accepting a piece, adding it to the publishing calendar, & publishing it varies & is often much longer than expected.

If you’d like more tips from an editor, Cincinnati Review’s Lisa Ampleman reminds writers to withdraw their work that is accepted elsewhere, keep an eye on your spam folder, and follow guidelines. Says she, “I know that this credo gets repeated ad nauseam in recommendation lists, but there’s a reason it keeps coming up: people don’t follow directions...Take your time and craft each file for the individual recipient rather than sending out the same thing to several mags without doing a deeper dive.”

For poets, Radha Marcum shares her own submissions strategy. In The Power of Threes, noting, “After implementing this last year, I doubled my acceptance rate. More importantly, it has taken a lot of the angst and unnecessary pain out of the process. The more I embrace numbers, the more consistently I submit, the more successes I have, and the better I feel about the process. Win, win, win.”

For those of you on the job hunt:

Los Angeles Review of Books is seeking a part-time Senior Editor “to work closely with the editor in chief and managing editor on production of The LARB Quarterly, as well as coordination and development of the online magazine.”

The Common is looking for volunteer readers.

In Ireland, The Stinging Fly is seeking an Editor.

The Yale Review seeks an Editorial Assistant.

For those of you on the lit-mag-market prowl:

Erika Dreifus has a new list of opportunities. No fee to submit and paying markets only.

Authors Publish has 37 Themed Submission Calls for June 2022 and 5 Paying Literary Magazines to Submit to in June 2022.

Poet Angela T. Carr has a list of “over 140 poetry competitions, writing submissions and opportunities open or with deadlines in June 2022.”

Erica Verillo has 12 Paying Markets Open to Speculative Fiction Short Stories; 63 Writing Contests in June 2022 - No entry fees; and Novellas and Novels and 95 Calls for Submissions in June 2022 - Paying markets.

You might also be interested in this nifty resource I just discovered: The Short List “compilation lists journals that publish prose of 3,000 words or under.” At the site, you can click on a number and it will take you to a list of journals that seek work in that word range. How cool is that?

Finally, don’t ask me how, but somehow, I stumbled on this absolute gem from a 1916 issue of The Atlantic. In “Literary Stepping Stones,” the author (whose name does not appear) describes her first story acceptance. Here’s a long quote, but hopefully worth the read:

I shall never, never forget the day that wonderful acceptance came. We had guests in the house, and the women folks were all arraying themselves for a day’s shopping. I was taking a bath. I expect that every crisis in my life will find me taking a bath…
On this occasion, I had hurriedly begun to dress, when there came a thundering pound upon the door.
Thinking that somebody had fallen downstairs, I rushed to open it, and there stood Elizabeth, jumping up and down, waving a white envelope and crying, —
‘ook! The Atlantic! An acceptance! An acceptance!’
‘It is n’t. I don’t believe it,’ I stammered incoherently, while I tore open the envelope…It was quite too much for me to bear. I had never been so happy in my life, and I put my head down on the edge of the chiffonier and began to cry.
…One guest, hearing the commotion, and seeing only an envelope and me with my head on the chiffonier, believed, not unnaturally, that somebody was dead and that I was about to faint away. She hastened back to her room for her traveling flask. Before I could protest or explain, she was pouring whiskey down my throat, and I went immediately into a violent choking fit, which so alarmed my mother on the floor below that she hurried upstairs as fast as she could with a glass of water, with which I was deluged by the time the situation became clear.
Then everybody talked and questioned and congratulated, for we are fond and foolish folk, who rejoice mightily over one another’s good fortune. I do not recall what payment I received for that Club essay, nor what I did with the money. The remuneration was immaterial. The acceptance was the thing — the sweetest, most blissful reality. I have had many acceptances since then, but none so exciting and momentous. The first great thrill cannot come again.

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