Two big pub wins this month for me: a short story of mine, "In the Style of Miriam Ackerman," about art, family and AI, comes out in the print edition of the Cincinnati Review! https://www.cincinnatireview.com/issue/21-2/ I had a great experience with the editors there (and had gotten many rejections in the past!)
And - my short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees, came out this month! It won the Iowa Short Fiction Award (which is a FREE contest I totally recommend to all fiction writers). You can find more about the book here (https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/man-banana-trees) and buy it wherever you buy your books. It was also named one of Debutiful's best debut books of the year. So I'm celebrating!
Wow. Love the Cincinnati Review and double Wow, for winning the Iowa Short Fiction Award. I entered that contest, but guess what, I didn't win, but it's in good hands. Congrats.
Congrats! (And yes, every year I feature the Iowa Short Fiction Award in THE PRACTICING WRITER. For that matter, I've just announced Cincinnati Review's imminent reading period in the latest newsletter, too: https://bit.ly/3B4lzem.)
Barbara, I loved “Chagall Dreams” (I adore Chagall, too!) So evocative of him, of memory, of flying through the past and the present. Congratulations on this lovely poem!
I had a piece very close to my heart published this month in Redivider - an experience I would wholeheartedly recommend to other writers! They worked meaningfully and thoroughly with me on edits and proofing, publish work online *and* later in print, and publish really compelling work across the board - I was so honoured to earn a place in the latest issue!
This was also an essay that was very difficult to place - I submitted it to about 30 places before Redivider picked it up.
If anyone would like to read, you can find it here:
What a sad story about your friend B. This thing about engagement and making our sorrows and joys commercial on Instagram--what you say is so true, poets and writers want engagement, and on Instagram they get it, but at what cost to their souls? I don't know. I have wanted to engage on Instagram to get followers who will but my memoir so I can attract an agent and then a publisher, but I resist. It feels so false to me. But maybe that's a function of being 69 as opposed to early 30s. Makes a difference, but perhaps I'm just being naive. "Instagram poetry may simultaneously be poetry, and not, but it doesn’t particularly matter, especially when the value of poetry is increasingly defined by the commercial value of poetry." Such an interesting essay. Congrats.
Such a moving piece. To start with etymology and end with instapoetics' lack of poetic and word choice was deftly done. And to balance this astride how we balance our personal identity with our online persona was expertly achieved. Juxtaposing art's evasion of mortality with B's passing hit me so hard. So many threads that you wove together wonderfully here, all tethered to engagement and its multitude of meanings. I did not expect to feel so much this morning. Thank you for sharing.
Becky, thank you so much for this opportunity to share a piece I’ve worked on for a very long time.
Funny story: the idea for this hermit crab essay grabbed hold of me more than three years ago and wouldn’t let me go. In the early days, I sent it to a number of lit mags with a “close but not quite” response. I couldn’t seem to crack it…but after listening to advice from a variety of writers and learning more about the form, it was finally accepted at Hippocampus (a big win, as I’ve long admired the writing there and the folks who run it).
Imagine my surprise when I dragged the acceptance into their email folder (yes, I am in fact obsessively organized, at least in my writing life) and realized that when I’d sent it to them years earlier, they’d said I was onto something with this piece and should keep working at it. I’d completely forgotten this.
They took it basically without edits, and I’m thrilled to share it here!
My heart hurt when I read "pitching hard candy in your direction." So specific, conveys so much emotion. There is something about stories that won't leave you alone. They want to be told. Congratulations, Casey, on finding this essay's home in Hippocampus!
Hi Alice, those are wonderful publications. I like the way the title of the first flowed into the first line which was a still a surprise and the last line of the second, which resonated.
Here’s my guess: the root word is actually the Latin evocare. To maintain the /k/ sound of the Latin in the English spelling, the letter ‘k’ has to be used because if the word were spelled ‘evoce’ the ‘ce’ element would be pronounced as /s/. What do you think?
Congratulations, everyone! I had a great November. A little piece of mine that ran in the Summer Nights issue of Blink-Ink was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in the Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies. I got a piece accepted by Pithead Chapel (doesn’t run until March) and the anthology that accepted two of my stories is now out!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DP3D5658?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520
Also got an acceptance, finally, for a story that has been rejected around forty times, and a fantastically encouraging rejection from another dream journal. Take the wins as they come!
Ooooh, I also love "The Better Business Bureau..."! Smart and crisp, wit-stoked. I particularly enjoyed its membership in the fairy-tale family and must now find more fairytales with finger prices. I just encountered such a transaction in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Congratulations on your publications!
Hahaha. Thanks, Lisa. I read that, but have no memory of finger payments in it. Lots of toe and foot payments in other fairy tales, though, as I recall.
November was a great month for me. A chapter from my memoir that was originally published in print is now available online at Midwest Review. What happens when a 15-year-old leaves home with her mom's permission to live on a commune? The peace and love hippies weren't all cracked up to be just that. https://midwestreview.org/polly-hansen/
Then I got two acceptances! One from Call Me [Brackets] (University of Alabama) for a holiday themed story that was accepted a year ago by Fjords Review. After saying they would publish my story last December, Fjords ghosted me even after several attempts to get in touch with them. They never published it. In the meantime, I'd withdrawn the story from several other journals. I see Fjords is still taking people's submission fees and have one new story up. Don't be fooled. I'd stay away from Fjords Review. Happily, "Ornaments" was accepted by Call Me [Brackets] and will be coming out in December.
Then I received another happy acceptance from Ekphrastic Review which will be posted December 9th. It's for my personal essay "The Foot at the Art Institute of Chicago," about a painting by Armida Abandoned by Rinaldo, Giambattista Tiepolo (Italy) 1742.
I love The Ekphrastic Review and look forward to reading your work there. And congrats on all your publications. I've been looking at Call Me [Brackets], so thanks for that.
Congratulations everyone!!! I will be reading many of the above published works and am excited to read within this community— I’m leaning into arts based community more than ever now… Room Magazine has an ancient excellent track record and quickly picked up a piece I’m very excited about because I played with voice in a way I hadn’t before — my piece is “The First Time I Consider Ending My Life I Am Four”. I’d LOVE to include the link here but the issue is print only and while on a ton of newsstands in Canada (and apparently the U.S.) it can be ordered here https://roommagazine.com/product/full-circle-47-4/ (I don’t expect anyone to pay $20 to read but I’m doing due diligence for the pub ) . Please continue to check out the prose book reviews I edit at my pub The Rumpus — this week’s — written by superb writer Jules Fitz Gerald — I’m particularly jazzed about https://therumpus.net/2024/11/26/the-burrow/. Finally the Maine Review nominated my essay “The Name Dropper” https://www.mainereview.com/the-name-dropper/ for a Best of Net and I’m deeply sincerely grateful.
Gotta go shopping. Been at this computer critiquing and commenting since 7:30 this morning. I aim to come back and finish reading all these great examples.
My personal essay "How to Avoid the Use of Adverbs While Telling You How My Husband Died" has been published this month in the newest edition of Fourth Genre — and I am truly honored to be in the company of such highly accomplished writers. The editors do a wonderful job, communications are clear, and I'm very, very proud to be included.
November was a good month. Three of my stories were published, two for the first time and one for the second. All were noir-style pieces that deviate from the standard storylines for that genre. "Best Served Cold" and "Ivory 2.0" appeared in Bristol Noir and "Sisters" appeared in Punk Noir. Both litmags are out of the UK and online. Their editors are responsive and very nice to work with. If you write, in those styles, give them a try. Also, these editors make a real effort to promote your work and pair it with some slick art work.
"Ivory 2.0" was a spinoff story from another piece I wrote (like one of those 70s sitcoms). While enduring 50 rejections before seeing the light of day, a quarter of them received positive comments and the piece came close several times. I had to revise it, cutting 250 of 2700 words to make Bristol Noir's word limit, but that wasn't as difficult as I feared.
Those positive rejections definitely kept me going and maintain faith in the pieces. If there's a message here, be persistent and take those nice rejection letters seriously.
My poem “Back When Our Gas Had Lead and Everything Was In Fact Poison” was published in August by the After Happy Hour Review. The team recently informed me that they selected it as on of their nominations for the Pushcart Prize 🥹🥹🥹
It already meant the world to have my poem accepted by the AHH Review for publication. This recognition is more than I could have hoped for or dreamed of.
Great essay, Becky, masterful with its layers dancing between individual and community aspects of the sweat, filled with meaning and nostalgia.
This month I published a flash fiction as part of the “Break-Up” series at Punk Noir Magazine, edited by Martine Proctor, fellow LitMagNews denizen. One of the rare times I’ve had something available that not only seemed like a good match for a theme, but fit the word count without the need for painful shoehorning or dubious expansion. Check it out here: https://punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/2024/11/18/b-and-e-by-jon-fain/
I have an unusual brag this month. I had a book review published in Washington Independent Review of Books. I had never read Niall Williams before and loved his new novel, Time of the Child. I admired his character descriptions so much that I copied one out and analyzed why it worked before revising the character descriptions in my novel draft. The day the review was published, to my amazement, the author and his wife thanked me on Bluesky!
I haven’t had my work accepted yet. And that bothered me at one point but I learned there’s basically a one percent chance of getting accepted and I have put in 100 submissions yet.
BUT in the meantime, I finished writing my first ever chapbook, which was an unexpected consequence of my poetry project. So I’m going to try and get that published. It’s also crazy to have finished that particular project.
Thanks for the encouragement. I started the "get published" project two years ago and figured it would take two years to get published. But I also started from scratch, one poem at a time, for a project that was supposed to be ten poems followed by ten short stories followed by ten essays. Now I have nearly 50 poems, 40 of them are now a book (because I kept asking "what if") and one short story. I don't yet have 100 rejections, though, either in total or if you could each poem as a separate submission. I'm getting close, though, so the odds seem to be in my favor.
I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I am so grateful to Jeff Georgeson, Editor for Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine. He rejected a batch of my poems (including "A dream") and provided very helpful feedback.
This month, I received 26 rejections with 3 poems accepted for publication. I have been writing poetry since high school but only started submitting my poems this past summer. I still feel like I die a little with each rejection. To be fair, I have been able to continue revising my poems after rejections, and I believe I am becoming a stronger poet as a result.
If y'all have the chance to check out "A dream," I hope you like it.
Two big pub wins this month for me: a short story of mine, "In the Style of Miriam Ackerman," about art, family and AI, comes out in the print edition of the Cincinnati Review! https://www.cincinnatireview.com/issue/21-2/ I had a great experience with the editors there (and had gotten many rejections in the past!)
And - my short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees, came out this month! It won the Iowa Short Fiction Award (which is a FREE contest I totally recommend to all fiction writers). You can find more about the book here (https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/man-banana-trees) and buy it wherever you buy your books. It was also named one of Debutiful's best debut books of the year. So I'm celebrating!
Wow. Love the Cincinnati Review and double Wow, for winning the Iowa Short Fiction Award. I entered that contest, but guess what, I didn't win, but it's in good hands. Congrats.
Congrats! (And yes, every year I feature the Iowa Short Fiction Award in THE PRACTICING WRITER. For that matter, I've just announced Cincinnati Review's imminent reading period in the latest newsletter, too: https://bit.ly/3B4lzem.)
Brava! Wonderful news.
HUge month for you. Congrats!
Amazing!
Excellent! Much to be proud of! Congratulations.
That’s awesome 👏
Not a bad month...
Accepted this month:
Jewish Writing Project, “In His Hands” and “Repairing the World with Chicken Soup”
The Ekphrastic Review, “Gertrude’s of South Orange,” after a Manet painting
The Ekphrastic Review Writing Challenge, “Studio Swan Song” and “Doors Swing Open at the Old Hall, a Pantoum”
The Main Street Rag, “Chasing Windmills” and “Taxidermy”
Moss Piglet, “I Bequeath to You”
Paterson Literary Review, “What the River Knows”
Nominated for Best Microfiction 2025 by The Ekphrastic Review, “Interior Design”
No revisions. First time in the Main Street Rag.
Appearing this month:
Poetry:
Vita Poetica, “In the Shtetl, G-d Does Not Only”
https://www.vitapoetica.org/autumn-2024/in-the-shtetl-g-d-does-not-only
Here: A Poetry Journal, “My Father’s Shop-Rite as Family Portrait, 1968.” Here: A Poetry Journal.
Heimat Review, “Kinesthetics”
https://www.heimatreview.com/kinesthetics.html
Heimat Review, “Chagall Dreams”
https://www.heimatreview.com/chagall-dreams.html
Essay:
Bewildering Stories, “Two Sisters”
http://mail.bewilderingstories.com/issue1068/two_sisters.html
Hey, leave some ops for the rest of us! Just kidding. This list is amazing. Congrats.
Congratulations!! Way to crush it!
Barbara, I loved “Chagall Dreams” (I adore Chagall, too!) So evocative of him, of memory, of flying through the past and the present. Congratulations on this lovely poem!
Very impressive list, Barbara! Mazel tov, and happy Chanukah! Janet
Amazing snd wonderful, Barbara!
Wow, Barbara, what a month! Congratulations!
Wow!!! Many congrats!
wow!
Congratulations, Barbara!
Wow, mazal tov Barbara, that's a great month
Wow! That’s an amazing November! Congrats! So validating.
Wow, that's one heck of an impressive list, and all in a single month! Congratulations.
Wow! Great month!
So Prolific! Much congrats to you!
Congratulations!
Holy cow, congrats!! Can't wait to read "Chicken Soup" especially.
I had a piece very close to my heart published this month in Redivider - an experience I would wholeheartedly recommend to other writers! They worked meaningfully and thoroughly with me on edits and proofing, publish work online *and* later in print, and publish really compelling work across the board - I was so honoured to earn a place in the latest issue!
This was also an essay that was very difficult to place - I submitted it to about 30 places before Redivider picked it up.
If anyone would like to read, you can find it here:
https://redivider.emerson.edu/on-engagement/
<333
love Redivider!! Excited to check this piece out!
I particularly admire the final paragraph in which you described the way distance increased the connection with B. Congratulations!
What a sad story about your friend B. This thing about engagement and making our sorrows and joys commercial on Instagram--what you say is so true, poets and writers want engagement, and on Instagram they get it, but at what cost to their souls? I don't know. I have wanted to engage on Instagram to get followers who will but my memoir so I can attract an agent and then a publisher, but I resist. It feels so false to me. But maybe that's a function of being 69 as opposed to early 30s. Makes a difference, but perhaps I'm just being naive. "Instagram poetry may simultaneously be poetry, and not, but it doesn’t particularly matter, especially when the value of poetry is increasingly defined by the commercial value of poetry." Such an interesting essay. Congrats.
Congrats, Mair. I like how this balanced the personal with the wider theme of poetry. I’m sorry about B.
I'm so glad you persisted with 30 submissions so we could all read this beautiful essay. Redivider gave it the perfect home. Congratulations, Mair.
Such a moving piece. To start with etymology and end with instapoetics' lack of poetic and word choice was deftly done. And to balance this astride how we balance our personal identity with our online persona was expertly achieved. Juxtaposing art's evasion of mortality with B's passing hit me so hard. So many threads that you wove together wonderfully here, all tethered to engagement and its multitude of meanings. I did not expect to feel so much this morning. Thank you for sharing.
Becky, thank you so much for this opportunity to share a piece I’ve worked on for a very long time.
Funny story: the idea for this hermit crab essay grabbed hold of me more than three years ago and wouldn’t let me go. In the early days, I sent it to a number of lit mags with a “close but not quite” response. I couldn’t seem to crack it…but after listening to advice from a variety of writers and learning more about the form, it was finally accepted at Hippocampus (a big win, as I’ve long admired the writing there and the folks who run it).
Imagine my surprise when I dragged the acceptance into their email folder (yes, I am in fact obsessively organized, at least in my writing life) and realized that when I’d sent it to them years earlier, they’d said I was onto something with this piece and should keep working at it. I’d completely forgotten this.
They took it basically without edits, and I’m thrilled to share it here!
https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2024/11/help-wanted-pre-emptive-griever-by-casey-mulligan-walsh/
Really clever essay, and Hippocampus is a great review.
I need to hire for this position!! You've hit so many detailed aspects of this kind of worry. Well done!!
False sense of control and misery loves company were my favorites. Great hermit idea. Congrats, Casey!
I'm a reader for Hippocampus, they are a hard nut to crack. Big congradulations!
Right on for staying with this piece. Time well spent. Love it--congratulations!
My heart hurt when I read "pitching hard candy in your direction." So specific, conveys so much emotion. There is something about stories that won't leave you alone. They want to be told. Congratulations, Casey, on finding this essay's home in Hippocampus!
Wow, congratulations, Casey. It was obviously meant for Hippocampus.
Loved this!
I was happy to have a poem in Blackbird:
https://blackbird.vcu.edu/on-our-last-family-vacation/
And another in The Ex-Puritan:
https://ex-puritan.ca/my-children-draw-a-line-down-my-body
Both journals were wonderful to work with!
Hi Alice, those are wonderful publications. I like the way the title of the first flowed into the first line which was a still a surprise and the last line of the second, which resonated.
Gorgeous work.
Two powerful poems!
At first I thought it was a poem in the voice of a girl that had drowned because of the title. I'm glad you made it out alive. So evocative.
Question: Why is it spelled evocative when the root word is evoke?
Here’s my guess: the root word is actually the Latin evocare. To maintain the /k/ sound of the Latin in the English spelling, the letter ‘k’ has to be used because if the word were spelled ‘evoce’ the ‘ce’ element would be pronounced as /s/. What do you think?
I think you're onto something. Thanks digging and sharing.
Congrats!
Congratulations, everyone! I had a great November. A little piece of mine that ran in the Summer Nights issue of Blink-Ink was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in the Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies. I got a piece accepted by Pithead Chapel (doesn’t run until March) and the anthology that accepted two of my stories is now out!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DP3D5658?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520
Kim at Pithead Chapel is such an enthusiastic reader and editor. And that's awesome about being award nominated for all your work!
Thank you! I have loved Kim’s work forever so I am thrilled!
Congrats, Angela! Pithead is great!
Thank you so much! I am beyond excited about this!
congratulations!
Two great publications, congrats!
Two pieces published this month, one in Flash Frog (https://flash-frog.com/2024/11/18/empty-nest-by-liz-rosen/), one of my dream journals and it took 14 submissions to get one accepted there, the other in fun new lit mag Silly Goose Press (https://sillygoosepress.com/issue-three/the-better-business-bureau-receives-a-complaint-from-the-baker).
Also got an acceptance, finally, for a story that has been rejected around forty times, and a fantastically encouraging rejection from another dream journal. Take the wins as they come!
Love the Flash Frog piece!
Thank you!
Color wise I'm a winter. Fun story. May we all rise. I love how you have the dads second guessing. Congrats.
Thank you!
Congrats on getting your story in Flash Frog! It’s one of my dream journals too.
Thank you. Keep submitting. Took persistence.
Ooooh, I also love "The Better Business Bureau..."! Smart and crisp, wit-stoked. I particularly enjoyed its membership in the fairy-tale family and must now find more fairytales with finger prices. I just encountered such a transaction in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Congratulations on your publications!
Hahaha. Thanks, Lisa. I read that, but have no memory of finger payments in it. Lots of toe and foot payments in other fairy tales, though, as I recall.
I loved “The Better Business Bureau,” Liz. Such an imaginative take on fairytales!
Aw, thanks, Donna. I liked your stories, too.
Thank you for reading!
November was a great month for me. A chapter from my memoir that was originally published in print is now available online at Midwest Review. What happens when a 15-year-old leaves home with her mom's permission to live on a commune? The peace and love hippies weren't all cracked up to be just that. https://midwestreview.org/polly-hansen/
Then I got two acceptances! One from Call Me [Brackets] (University of Alabama) for a holiday themed story that was accepted a year ago by Fjords Review. After saying they would publish my story last December, Fjords ghosted me even after several attempts to get in touch with them. They never published it. In the meantime, I'd withdrawn the story from several other journals. I see Fjords is still taking people's submission fees and have one new story up. Don't be fooled. I'd stay away from Fjords Review. Happily, "Ornaments" was accepted by Call Me [Brackets] and will be coming out in December.
Then I received another happy acceptance from Ekphrastic Review which will be posted December 9th. It's for my personal essay "The Foot at the Art Institute of Chicago," about a painting by Armida Abandoned by Rinaldo, Giambattista Tiepolo (Italy) 1742.
Polly, please see my article about Fjords Review: https://litmagnews.substack.com/p/showcase-magazine-ephemera-c-and
Yes, I was hoping you'd repost your article. I read it after asking you about that journal last year. I wish they'd just go away.
I love The Ekphrastic Review and look forward to reading your work there. And congrats on all your publications. I've been looking at Call Me [Brackets], so thanks for that.
Yes, they are very responsive. I submitted on September 9 and got an acceptance November 9.
LOVED your memoir chapter. Just fabulous.
Enjoyed the memoir excerpt very much, brought me back to those early 70s days.
Thanks, Jon. You're an old hippie, too?
Never lived on a commune, but could have passed for one, I suppose.
Congrats, Polly. I enjoyed your memoir chapter. I thought it was going to turn into Lord of the Flies after the duck.
Thanks for reading, Dennis! Not quite Lord of the Flies, but almost. The Tom Baden character shows up again.
Thanks for the warning about Fjords
Thanks for the warning and congrats on re-placing the story.
Congratulations Polly. Great to hear.
Congratulations everyone!!! I will be reading many of the above published works and am excited to read within this community— I’m leaning into arts based community more than ever now… Room Magazine has an ancient excellent track record and quickly picked up a piece I’m very excited about because I played with voice in a way I hadn’t before — my piece is “The First Time I Consider Ending My Life I Am Four”. I’d LOVE to include the link here but the issue is print only and while on a ton of newsstands in Canada (and apparently the U.S.) it can be ordered here https://roommagazine.com/product/full-circle-47-4/ (I don’t expect anyone to pay $20 to read but I’m doing due diligence for the pub ) . Please continue to check out the prose book reviews I edit at my pub The Rumpus — this week’s — written by superb writer Jules Fitz Gerald — I’m particularly jazzed about https://therumpus.net/2024/11/26/the-burrow/. Finally the Maine Review nominated my essay “The Name Dropper” https://www.mainereview.com/the-name-dropper/ for a Best of Net and I’m deeply sincerely grateful.
Gotta go shopping. Been at this computer critiquing and commenting since 7:30 this morning. I aim to come back and finish reading all these great examples.
I don't think I will ever hear "plunge pool" without cracking up. I can see why "The Name Dropper" was nominated. Great essay--congratulations!
HUGE sincere gratitude for reading it — and remembering plunge pool ;)
Congrats on getting into "Room"--they've been on my wish list! And on your book review and nomination for "Best of the Net."
Hi I wrote earlier but don’t think it went through. I really apppreciate what you wrote. Thank you!
My personal essay "How to Avoid the Use of Adverbs While Telling You How My Husband Died" has been published this month in the newest edition of Fourth Genre — and I am truly honored to be in the company of such highly accomplished writers. The editors do a wonderful job, communications are clear, and I'm very, very proud to be included.
Congrats! Hoping I can track down a copy of your essay, such a compelling title.
Thank you, Judy! Here's their website, although I have to say they don't make it easy to find where to get a copy: https://fourthgenre.org/
Joining the great-title-would-love-to-read-it club. Congratulations!
Damn, love the name of the essay.
Thank you! It was hard-earned :-)
November was a good month. Three of my stories were published, two for the first time and one for the second. All were noir-style pieces that deviate from the standard storylines for that genre. "Best Served Cold" and "Ivory 2.0" appeared in Bristol Noir and "Sisters" appeared in Punk Noir. Both litmags are out of the UK and online. Their editors are responsive and very nice to work with. If you write, in those styles, give them a try. Also, these editors make a real effort to promote your work and pair it with some slick art work.
"Ivory 2.0" was a spinoff story from another piece I wrote (like one of those 70s sitcoms). While enduring 50 rejections before seeing the light of day, a quarter of them received positive comments and the piece came close several times. I had to revise it, cutting 250 of 2700 words to make Bristol Noir's word limit, but that wasn't as difficult as I feared.
https://www.bristolnoir.co.uk/ivory-2-0-by-matthew-snyderman/
"Best Served Cold" had a little over 30 rejections about 1/5 of which were positive. Not much revising, there. It also appeared in Bristol Noir.
https://www.bristolnoir.co.uk/best-served-cold-by-matthew-snyderman/
"Sisters" made it into print a second time. Not many rejections for this one. It appeared in Punk Noir.
https://punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/2024/11/13/sisters-by-matthew-snyderman/
Those positive rejections definitely kept me going and maintain faith in the pieces. If there's a message here, be persistent and take those nice rejection letters seriously.
I found out about both litmags via Duotrope.
I
Nice to share space with you in the "Break-Up" series.
Many thanks. Read & enjoyed "B & E," too. Ah, modern relationships. ;)
My poem “Back When Our Gas Had Lead and Everything Was In Fact Poison” was published in August by the After Happy Hour Review. The team recently informed me that they selected it as on of their nominations for the Pushcart Prize 🥹🥹🥹
https://thehourafterhappyhour.wordpress.com/2024/11/17/pushcart-prize-nominations/
It already meant the world to have my poem accepted by the AHH Review for publication. This recognition is more than I could have hoped for or dreamed of.
Congratulations! I love AHH Review--such a wonderful team.
Congrats!
Great essay, Becky, masterful with its layers dancing between individual and community aspects of the sweat, filled with meaning and nostalgia.
This month I published a flash fiction as part of the “Break-Up” series at Punk Noir Magazine, edited by Martine Proctor, fellow LitMagNews denizen. One of the rare times I’ve had something available that not only seemed like a good match for a theme, but fit the word count without the need for painful shoehorning or dubious expansion. Check it out here: https://punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/2024/11/18/b-and-e-by-jon-fain/
Thank you, Jon.
Wonderful story, Jon. I especially love "no remorse code"!
I love this story. So honest and full of surprises, dishonesty being one of them. Lots of paradoxes--simple, yet complex. Great job. Congrats.
Thanks Polly, appreciate it.
Congrats Jon. I like how it started with circling the drain.
I have an unusual brag this month. I had a book review published in Washington Independent Review of Books. I had never read Niall Williams before and loved his new novel, Time of the Child. I admired his character descriptions so much that I copied one out and analyzed why it worked before revising the character descriptions in my novel draft. The day the review was published, to my amazement, the author and his wife thanked me on Bluesky!
I haven’t had my work accepted yet. And that bothered me at one point but I learned there’s basically a one percent chance of getting accepted and I have put in 100 submissions yet.
BUT in the meantime, I finished writing my first ever chapbook, which was an unexpected consequence of my poetry project. So I’m going to try and get that published. It’s also crazy to have finished that particular project.
Keep trying! I had a yearlong drought when I started sending out my work again.
Thanks for the encouragement. I started the "get published" project two years ago and figured it would take two years to get published. But I also started from scratch, one poem at a time, for a project that was supposed to be ten poems followed by ten short stories followed by ten essays. Now I have nearly 50 poems, 40 of them are now a book (because I kept asking "what if") and one short story. I don't yet have 100 rejections, though, either in total or if you could each poem as a separate submission. I'm getting close, though, so the odds seem to be in my favor.
My poem "A dream" was published in JAKE back on November 6th. You can read it here: https://jakethemag.com/a-dream/
I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I am so grateful to Jeff Georgeson, Editor for Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine. He rejected a batch of my poems (including "A dream") and provided very helpful feedback.
This month, I received 26 rejections with 3 poems accepted for publication. I have been writing poetry since high school but only started submitting my poems this past summer. I still feel like I die a little with each rejection. To be fair, I have been able to continue revising my poems after rejections, and I believe I am becoming a stronger poet as a result.
If y'all have the chance to check out "A dream," I hope you like it.
I’ve started regarding my rejections as a kind of badge! Good job.