Well, friends, we have eaten, we have drunk, we have stuffed birds and stuffed ourselves, we have cleaned and swept and waved hello and goodbye and we have worked and daydreamed and we have, once again, careened headlong into the last weekend of the month.
You know what that means.
It is time for all of you to tell us where you had work published this past month. In what beautiful lit mag did your sparkling words find a home?
Share the link!
Tell us the story behind the story, the journey of every poem.
Did you revise the piece as you sent it out, or was it published in its original form?
How many places did you submit the piece before it was accepted?
How did you find out about the journal where it was accepted?
Are you pleased with the final presentation?
Did the editors work with you on revision?
Don’t be shy now. This weekend is all about recognizing you—your hard work, your dedication and your perseverance.
I have a story coming out December 7th in One Story. There were many rounds of edits, more than I've ever had, and I think it's a much stronger piece because of all of the hard work the editors put into it. I've sent them a number of other stories so this was a very nice acceptance for me!
No brag yet, but I just finished revising a cnf piece that got rejected by multiple journals and have started sending it out again. Proud of myself for accepting constructive criticism and persisting.
A perfect month! 5 pieces were accepted for publication - two of them paid! One is especially important because it was taken by a magazine that had rejected 4 other stories.
One piece of non-fiction really important to me - it got only three prior rejections before the final acceptance, LOL! A personal essay about someone who changed my life.
I had a story published in The Hudson Review, which I mention as Paula Deitz was one of the editors Becky recently interviewed. The title is <Love, Life & Death on the Oregon Trail: A Play by Krista Robinson, Age 11 2/3> It's a joy to work with such a professional publication! Also, their no-fee fiction contest is open until 11/30! Here's the link: https://hudsonreview.com/2023/11/love-life-death-on-the-oregon-trail-a-play-by-krista-robinson-age-11-2-3/
After a year of submissions and 13 rejections, I'm thrilled to have a poem placed in the next issue of Alaska Quarterly Review. Such a beautiful journal! For a panicky moment, I was afraid I would have to withdraw the poem because it's included in my forthcoming collection, WHISH. Yikes! Luckily, AQR will arrive soon after the New Year, and Press 53 is scheduling WHISH for spring. I couldn't ask for better timing.
November has been a very good month for me. My poem, "Depression, Early January," came out in the fall issue of the Baltimore Review. (It had been rejected by 12 journals.) I've also had six other poems accepted for publication: two by Bloodroot Literary Magazine, two by THINK, one by River Heron Review (after 10 rejections from other journals), and one by Arc Poetry in Canada (after 17 rejections!). Perseverance definitely pays off. Also, I've learned a lot about submitting since I started systematically sending poems out in February of 2022. I learned from a talk about submitting to aim for 100 rejections a year.
Here's the link to the poem in the Baltimore Review:
I hope everyone had a productive November, whether published or still waiting to hear. My essay "Babies in Bloom" appeared in Wild Roof Journal (https://wildroofjournal.com/issue-23-gallery-1/#NancyJorgensen). The editors did a fabulous round of social media promotion on their own and responded and liked my own posts. The Wild Roof Journal website states they are "open-themed but, we do have a particular interest for themes relating to nature & environment, including the intersection of “wild” nature and “civilized” society.
I revised an old poem, "Sleeping is His Superpower," into a flash fiction piece which will be coming out on Monday on Witcraft, a fairly new online journal, "The home of skillfully written stories that are brief, humorous and engaging, with the emphasis on wit, word play, absurdity and inspired nonsense."
My newest poem, "Bubbee & Zaydee, 1959," was accepted by Silver Birch Press and will be coming out soon as part of their ongoing Spices & Seasonings series.
A poem "Math" that has been rejected at least 10 times was accepted by Mono, a British litmag. That was a surprise, many months after the submission. Three poems were accepted by Dreich, also in the UK, and I had pieces accepted by Your Daily Poem, Verse Virtual, and Writing in a Woman's Voice.
I've been feeling discouraged because, other than "Bubbee & Zaydee, 1959," I haven't written anything new in what feels like a very long time... I appreciate this opportunity to pause and remember these acceptances. Maybe I will be able to write again. (Yes, laugh with me, but sometimes I do feel like there might not be any more poems in me...)
I'm excited to share 3 poems in the Anthropocene Poetry Journal published this month. I'd only ever had two poems in any journal before, so this was a first. I think I missed last month's brag so I'm sharing one from October too in the museum of americana! Congrats to all with recent publications!
I wrote this in August as part of the SmokeLong Summer and I will be reading it at the next SmokeLong open mic which is tomorrow at 11 NY time. I got another piece accepted last week that fits with this and hope to read that too.
This is another first issue publication. I’ve had success with these and I find them on Chill Subs by sorting on Recently Added.
Persimmon Lit was wonderful to work with and I love the aesthetics of the site. I recommend submitting for issue 2.
How it happened: I was browsing poems for inspiration and found one somewhere about a couple and an eclipse. I said to myself, Self, YOU have a killer eclipse story, why can't you make THAT into a poem? So I set it down and popped it with my current batch into the Typishly's "Poetry Tuesday" call on Monday night. I have probably sent Typishly 50 poems over the past three years, all more worked over and vetted than this one, which just goes to show you...something.
Earlier in the month, I had a poem published in my old fav Sad Girl Diaries:
I also had a few acceptances that will be published next year in Closed Eye Open and Wild Roof Review, both places I've been in previously and know to be nice to engage with.
And my Advanced Reader Copies of my full-length debut collection INITIAL CONDITIONS have arrived and if anyone wants to review, please let me know!
I have a haunted-house story (flash fiction) in the new issue of South Florida Poetry Journal (https://www.southfloridapoetryjournal.com/flash-31-nov-23.html) and was delighted to participate in their online launch reading earlier this month. It was a great opportunity for all the contributors to share our work in our own voices, and I really appreciate SoFloPoJo's approach to fostering community.
My translation of a short story by French author Monique Debruxelles appears in the new issue of the Irish lit mag Southword (print only, https://munsterlit.ie/bookshop/southword-45/). I had tried them last year with a different story by the same author and got a personal rejection, and I'm so glad this piece turned out to be a good fit. The editors are super transparent about their (daunting) submission statistics, which made last year's rejection feel like a big win and this year's acceptance feel more or less miraculous. And on a personal note, I'm thrilled that my family and friends in Ireland can pick up my work in a beautifully produced print journal at their local bookshops!
Congrats to everyone writing, reading, and submitting. The journey is worth celebrating regardless of the results! I counted 11 days in a row of rejections so far this month, but I look back on the Autumn issue of Panoply which published my glosa "Circuit Breaker." https://panoplyzine.com/circuit-breaker-by-jeanne-blum/ This was my first attempt at a glosa poem. I had been inspired by a workshop at the Theodore Roethke house in Saginaw conducted by Marion Starling Boyer whose Ice Hours collection had just been published and introduced me to the form. I agonized over this poem for weeks, and shared it with my first reader Storm Ainsely before submitting. The editor did not ask for any changes.
Congrats to everyone who's had publications this month. To those feeling frustrated by rejections, keep at it! I'm thrilled to have had two poems published in recent weeks: "Crooked" in Southern Poetry Review, and "Born of Water" in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. Both are print-only journals that I highly recommend. And both poems had a years-long journey to get to this point. "Crooked" started out as a villanelle, but I workshopped it with a group who convinced me that it didn't need to be so wordy, so I stripped it down. Once it was accepted, the editor worked with me on one word that didn't seem right to him. "Born of Water" was written when my son was an infant, and now he's about to turn 12. It's a matter of revision and finding the right home.
My soft horror short story "The Guidebook" appears this coming Tuesday, November 28, at Pyre, https://www.pyremagazine.com. All acceptances are good, but the editor sent me an especially positive message about how much he enjoyed it, making the acceptance that much better.
Feeling very lucky to have a story, "Tiger on My Roof," in the new (print) issue of Epiphany. This comes after 24 rejections, and I have nothing but great things to say about the beautiful issue it came out in and working with the editors there.
Not a story, but an interview about it. Between the time I submitted and the time I learned it was a flash fiction finalist for the London Independent Story Prize, I wrote two companion pieces. I elected not to have the first piece published with LISP because I think the trio is stronger than each piece separately. Plus, publishing one might decrease the odds for the other two. Like that logic? Have others here made similar or different decisions?https://www.londonindependentstoryprize.co.uk/post/lisa-k-buchanan
In January 2021, I submitted an essay, "Talismans," to North Dakota Quarterly. First time, only submission. It was accepted a week later, but somehow was missed in the print journal. It finally got published in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue. Much to my delight, it is listed as a "Notable Essay" in the Best American Essays of 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. I wonder: if it if hadn't been skipped over and then printed later, would it have been selected?
Last week, my poem "No presumption of innocence" was curated by On the High Literary Magazine for its Film Noir issue. I did not revise the poem to fit the theme but I had a strong feeling the theme would shine a spotlight some of the poem's key images. I held the poem until the submission period and did not submit anywhere else. Happily, the editors took it and the poem has a home with a number of other very good poems and short stories that are made even stronger by how they read together.
- I had a super cool one in Black Cat Weekly, "An Arm and a Leg" - https://blackcatweekly.com/b/HQBkY - working with the editor to take what was a riddle of a story and turn it into a solid (and much longer) piece. Very proud of that one.
And, drum roll, tadaaah! I signed a contract for my PI book. It'll come out next year and it's been a long, long journey. To say I'm stoked is to put it mildly.
I have submitted to Nunum many times without success but I was delighted to receive this recently 'Thank you for sending us "Detourmentia". We love it, you popped our heads, and we would love to include it in our next anthology.'
Delighted to be included in Marsha Ingrao's first Story Chat anthology, now available on Amazon. https://tinyurl.com/2n9u94je
I’ve had a short poem called “The Lost Ship Amistad” accepted by Pure Slush as part of their Lifespan series Vol 11 called Loss. They don’t publish online, only in print. The poem is about losing a friendship that went back to the 1960s. The person alluded to in the poem is the same age as me and had come over from France with his wife and child to work at the same Polytechnic as me in Coventry. Our families became very close, and he and I used to play squash together regularly. After three years, he was appointed to a role as éditeur with the UN in Geneva, but we kept in touch via emails and even met up on a couple of occasions, once in France and once in Seville. Yet earlier this year we had a falling out over some minor disagreement. I suppose the crotchetiness of old men had something to do with it. Anyway, he stopped contacting me.
As there are such a lot of abstract nouns in English ending in -ship, I decided to compare our loss of friendship with a ship lost at sea. After revising it several times until I was satisfied with it, I sent it to Pure Slush because the editor had published my writing on previous occasions, and I had met him in Seville in June this year when he was on extended leave doing a grand tour of Europe from Australia. Maybe the lavish way my wife and I entertained him encouraged him to accept the poem. :-)
My story "Shoe Shoe Sh'Boogie" is included in the newly published crime fiction anthology from Murderous Ink Press, "Crimeucopia: Crank It Up!". (Sharing pages with fellow Lit Mag News denizen Martine Proctor, who also has a story there.)
(also available via Bookshop.org and other non-Death Star outlets; also multiple e-book alternatives)
"Shoe Shoe..." is one of the longer stories I've written and published in years, close to 10,000 words. I started sending it out in January, first to a novelette contest (that rare creature) and three other places that didn't want it either. Not as many options for something that length. Murderous Ink doesn't take simsubs, but it was worth the shot, and they didn't take too long to decide. Part of the impetus for the writing of it came from trying something with "criminal fuck-ups" ala Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen.
November's been a great month for me - two new acceptances plus a feminist prose poem in Issue 8 of surrealist-inspired journal "Exist Otherwise".
I've had an ekphrastic prose poem written from a Dali painting accepted into "The Ekphrastic Review" for their first-ever print anthology - "The Memory Palace". I wrote "Dali Speaks to Me in Dreams" especially for the sub call. Entries were judged blind. TER's editor is collaborating with Clare MacQueen of Macqueen's Quinterly for the project, due out early 2024. The writing on TER never fails to inspire, so I'm stoked to be included. This is my 3rd publication with TER. I know others submit to TER here, so I'll be curious to see if others have a similar announcement to celebrate!
I've also had a villanelle with Gothic tones accepted into Quill & Crow's monthly print/online journal of Gothic fiction & poetry. Theme: Darkest Endings. I wrote it on a Friday 2 weeks ago (especially for the call), revised it over the weekend, submitted the following Monday and it was accepted two days later! I either found them on Twitter or via the Authors Publish website. They're mainly a literary Gothic/horror book publisher with an eye for beautiful cover designs, based in the US. They don't pay a lot for poems, but I'm always grateful for even token payments. I queried the exclusivity period in the contract (2 years) & they've very kindly revised it for me. The TER project (above) was a 4-month long wait, so it was delightful to have my raven-themed poem wing its way to roost so swiftly. The editors tell me it will be out on December 1st.
Here's the link to my prose poem - my 3rd piece published with Exist Otherwise:
Hi Becky, I have had a story published this month in the Australian poetry journal, oxygen. Editor Cheryl Howard was accepting non-fiction for the first time. I knew of the magazine through my writing group. One day a member mentioned having seen a Samuel Beckett play, and lo! ... 'Waiting for Beckett' - my piece - was born. I'd had the story in 'my back pocket' for years and finally it had found its right time and place.
I'm going to have my first poetry publication appear in the February issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). I've had work turned down there before, so I'm honored they excepted this elegiac poem. Ironically, the title is "When?"
There’s something to learned advice shared by Poet Laureates and a face near mine on a ZOOM call with one (or hundreds of) fellow poets alike – throw nothing away! One poem about a girdle and another about a bra, written in 2017 and 2022 respectively, morphed into Poetic Foundations published by 805 Lit & Art four days ago (November 21, 2023)!
Early this year under the inspiration of my Poetry Muse (PM) I combined and revised those poems into one I thought suitable for submission. No editors were involved. Whether accepted or declined, my PM reminded me I had a third poem written. “Sometimes this is the reward.” she whispered. I submitted it; my contribution was declined.
At the height of COVID, an email from 805 Lit + Art (an award-winning litmag) appeared miraculously in my inbox. It was a call for pieces celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. As a female, BIPOC, senior poet, I responded. In August 2020, The Lady in the Pictures was published in print and audio forms.
As of this writing, the 805 has published four of my pieces (and a few photographs). As a FL resident, I couldn’t be more pleased with the resulting presentations by this FL-based team of librarians and writers.
I reviewed the proofs for a piece about disability coming out next week in a zine called Knee Brace (love the name!) and the copy editor was pin point accurate in her few suggestions. "Plan B" was just published in Opal Age Tribune which has a lovely website well worth reading. I loved the vibe of this lit mag which is why I submitted. Found them, I think, on Duotrope. Here's a PDF of the piece: https://writewithoutborders.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Plan-B.pdf
I've been publishing so much during and since the pandemic that I've kind of lost count, but I think these two personal essay above make my 61st and 62nd CNF pubs in that time. The ideas keep coming, as when I was walking my Westies this week and studying the leafless trees and thought: "You should write about how they make you feel--" That would be new for me since my personal essays have not included nature as a subject.
On a totally different note, I'm a few chapters away from finishing a novel that would be my 28th book. On the drive back from my master class, I realized my next step in the book could be simplified. I'm not ready to finish, but I've let go of an overly complex scene that needed a trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts and figured out something more dramatic, so I'm relieved.
I taught a 3-hour master class earlier in the month in the personal essay for Rochester Writers in Michigan. We had a lovely room with a conference table, great snacks, comfy chairs and every one of a dozen seats was taken. That's a great size for a class of any kind--at MSU, they crammed 25 and sometimes 30 people in CW classes. This master class built off the memoir session I had taught for the Rochester Writers conference two weeks before, in that I recommended dealing with memoir material in a short form first as a way to get started and also get published. The master class was an exhilarating experience--all the joy of teaching without the hassle of doing grades (or coping with bureaucracy).
Congratulations to everyone! I have also been quite fortunate this month. One essay was a finalist for the Barnhill Prize from Longridge Review - didn't win, but was published: https://longridgereview.com/elizabeth-bird/
A great month! I am excited that three of my flash CNF pieces were accepted by Variant Lit and will be published in January. I had a ghost story poem published Nov. 2 in Penumbra, and will have 3 poems published tomorrow in Synkroniciti! I've published in Synkroniciti several times, and the editor, Katherine McDaniel, is probably the nicest person on the planet, especially for emerging poets and writers.
After my earlier post about 11 rejections in November, I got an acceptance today of a hybrid memoir "Sugar Bowl of the Universe," which I wrote in 2021 and have submitted 30 times, 22 of those declined, though two previous reviews stated that they had passed reluctantly. At one point, I did an edit to make sure that the narrator wasn't coming off as "too good to be true."
34 Orchard, a magazine of the uncanny, published a new story of mine in their issue #8, which came out November 10th. (They publish in Fall and Spring. The editor is the widely published Kristi Petersen Schoonover.) The issue is downloadable from their site as a pdf, where they gently request but don't require a donation of $1.99. The issue includes contributors living around the world, from Australia, Belgium, London, to the US and Canada. I had the pleasure of meeting a number of them via Zoom where we celebrated the issue launch and got acquainted --no reading, just a warm supportive gathering across great distance on the launch day. I'm in Miami, but my story is titled "Adultery in Modern Massachusetts." All the earlier issues are also available. (I read several before I submitted.) https://34orchard.com/ ~Lynne Barrett
I am excited to have it out in the world where it can be read, and I am pleased to be in the company of so many other gifted writers. I think I found Spry by perusing the various lists of respected Literary Magazines. My disappointment is it apparently Spry is only publishing once a year. It took a year between acceptance and publication. But in the writing life, one must be patient.
I had two poems and a haibun published in November as well as receiving honorable mention for a haiku by the Haiku Society of America [HSA] for its 2023 Harold G Henderson Haiku Award that also appeared in the Fall 2023 print edition of the society’s triannual publication Frogpond. Links for these publications are here:
The haiku came to me quickly while dog sitting last July in northern NM. “Fogburst” was written last winter and went through numerous revisions. “Hemingway in Pamplona” was written last year while living in Ecuador and - after recently changing the formatting quite a bit - was accepted by streetcake magazine.
The haibun started out as strictly a prose poem perhaps six months ago but after getting involved with a haiku workshop here in the Denver area I saw how it could maybe work as a haibun. I inserted one haiku at the beginning middle and end and was very pleased with the result. At that point it was immediately accepted for publication by the Scarlet Dragonfly Journal.
Except for the HSA contest everything else I found about on Duotrope. Many more accepted during November as well that will be coming out over the next several months.
I have a piece in an anthology called “Instant Classic (That No One Will Read)”, a collection of satirical takes on writing and publishing. It just came out 3 days ago.
November has been a good month for me. I got some poems accepted for publication, and two poems of mine got published this month. My haiku “Halloween” appeared in Scarlet Dragonfly Journal's special Halloween Issue (November, 2023). I wrote the poem in October 2022 when Jupiter was prominent in the night sky. Kathleen Trocmet edits this journal. Here is the link: https://scarletdragonflyjournal.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/final-special-issue-halloween-2023.pdf
Also, my tanka “Phone Call II” appeared in the new journal entitled the art of tanka #1 (fall/winter 2023) on page 10. This tanka is a revision of an old poem that I wrote in the 1990s and recently revised as a tanka. The editor of the art of tanka is Pamela A. Babusci. I never give up on a poem.
Last minute good news! I had an acceptance late last night on a flash fiction from Waccamaw Journal! I'm very happy. I also just had a story published by Flash Fiction Magazine.
(A propos to a recent conversation on this very platform, I’m going to note that this story does happen to contain a sex scene and is a bit on the explicit side in general..)
I'm late to the party -- but I'm happy to be the caboose, if so!
My first haibun "Wintery Augury" was published in Haiku Canada Review (print only). Editor Mike Montreuil made two tiny edits and I appreciate him giving my piece such wonderful support. I have since put this piece on my website to share with my family and friends. Here's the link if you want to check it out!
On November 28th, the podcast The Slowdown, hosted by poet and professor Major Jackson, will feature Elisabeth Murawski's poem "Kinds of Silence," originally published in Southern Poetry Review. Episodes are available for listening at slowdownshow.org and on all podcast platforms.
Happy holidays to everyone and congrats on all your hard work.
I had a poem, With Pain, come out in Reapparition Journal. I love the theme of the journal as they focus on chronic illness, which I write about a lot but their site has ad pop-ups which I hate, so yeah.
And I found out today, a poem published in Honeyguide Magazine, Piglet Squid, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. They were great to work with and it's lovely to see your work accompanied by full color art these days.
Of course, the rejection pile was large but I try to smile at the successes.
My CFN piece, "The Bridge," was accepted at Jimson Weed--print only, so no link unfortunately! I submitted it to ten places, got rejected by two prior to being accepted. I'm thrilled because it's the first thing I've submitted since making the decision to focus on getting smaller pieces out in the world while I work on a book. I'm looking forward to having a robust practice of submitting, which actually feels fun, instead of dreadful, which is how I thought it would feel!
I have a story coming out December 7th in One Story. There were many rounds of edits, more than I've ever had, and I think it's a much stronger piece because of all of the hard work the editors put into it. I've sent them a number of other stories so this was a very nice acceptance for me!
No brag yet, but I just finished revising a cnf piece that got rejected by multiple journals and have started sending it out again. Proud of myself for accepting constructive criticism and persisting.
A perfect month! 5 pieces were accepted for publication - two of them paid! One is especially important because it was taken by a magazine that had rejected 4 other stories.
Two have already been published, - https://www.alteredrealitymag.com/abandon-all-hope-by-j-b-polk/
https://www.alteredrealitymag.com/the-house-of-special-purpose-by-j-b-polk/
and three are to be published soon.
One piece of non-fiction really important to me - it got only three prior rejections before the final acceptance, LOL! A personal essay about someone who changed my life.
I had a story published in The Hudson Review, which I mention as Paula Deitz was one of the editors Becky recently interviewed. The title is <Love, Life & Death on the Oregon Trail: A Play by Krista Robinson, Age 11 2/3> It's a joy to work with such a professional publication! Also, their no-fee fiction contest is open until 11/30! Here's the link: https://hudsonreview.com/2023/11/love-life-death-on-the-oregon-trail-a-play-by-krista-robinson-age-11-2-3/
My poem "Thanksgiving List" was published in Syncopation Literary Journal this month. https://syncopationliteraryjournal.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/d.b.-campbell-thanksgiving-list-proof-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2hrfSeW6l39DHDR_wPSImUi9I5fwXFmO4SXtK_j1lDCkKCnilvi34X8YM
After a year of submissions and 13 rejections, I'm thrilled to have a poem placed in the next issue of Alaska Quarterly Review. Such a beautiful journal! For a panicky moment, I was afraid I would have to withdraw the poem because it's included in my forthcoming collection, WHISH. Yikes! Luckily, AQR will arrive soon after the New Year, and Press 53 is scheduling WHISH for spring. I couldn't ask for better timing.
November has been a very good month for me. My poem, "Depression, Early January," came out in the fall issue of the Baltimore Review. (It had been rejected by 12 journals.) I've also had six other poems accepted for publication: two by Bloodroot Literary Magazine, two by THINK, one by River Heron Review (after 10 rejections from other journals), and one by Arc Poetry in Canada (after 17 rejections!). Perseverance definitely pays off. Also, I've learned a lot about submitting since I started systematically sending poems out in February of 2022. I learned from a talk about submitting to aim for 100 rejections a year.
Here's the link to the poem in the Baltimore Review:
https://baltimorereview.org/fall_2023/contributor/jane-mckinley
I hope everyone had a productive November, whether published or still waiting to hear. My essay "Babies in Bloom" appeared in Wild Roof Journal (https://wildroofjournal.com/issue-23-gallery-1/#NancyJorgensen). The editors did a fabulous round of social media promotion on their own and responded and liked my own posts. The Wild Roof Journal website states they are "open-themed but, we do have a particular interest for themes relating to nature & environment, including the intersection of “wild” nature and “civilized” society.
My poem "His Name Came Back to Me Today" was published in Sunlight Press. Here's the link:
https://www.thesunlightpress.com/2023/11/08/his-name-came-back-to-me-today/ I lsubmitted it to about 11 other journals. I believe I heard about the press through Duotrope. There were a few edits and I enjoyed the back and forth with the poetry editor. I found the editors very pleasant to work with.
Five of my poems were published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal. The editor, Strider Marcus Jones, sent me a wonderful acceptance email, praising my work and encouraging me to send more. Content warning: Please be advised that two of these poems, "Daddy" and "Fault Lines," are part of my ongoing exploration of the violence and abuse in my childhood. https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2023/11/five-poems-by-cynthia-bernard.html?fbclid=IwAR1sTun8pfSrF5SpVgwzB7GVese49F4mG_Qf798cUr8EWsNlX2MxmWeUMKY
I revised an old poem, "Sleeping is His Superpower," into a flash fiction piece which will be coming out on Monday on Witcraft, a fairly new online journal, "The home of skillfully written stories that are brief, humorous and engaging, with the emphasis on wit, word play, absurdity and inspired nonsense."
My newest poem, "Bubbee & Zaydee, 1959," was accepted by Silver Birch Press and will be coming out soon as part of their ongoing Spices & Seasonings series.
A poem "Math" that has been rejected at least 10 times was accepted by Mono, a British litmag. That was a surprise, many months after the submission. Three poems were accepted by Dreich, also in the UK, and I had pieces accepted by Your Daily Poem, Verse Virtual, and Writing in a Woman's Voice.
I've been feeling discouraged because, other than "Bubbee & Zaydee, 1959," I haven't written anything new in what feels like a very long time... I appreciate this opportunity to pause and remember these acceptances. Maybe I will be able to write again. (Yes, laugh with me, but sometimes I do feel like there might not be any more poems in me...)
Lots and lots and lots of rejections lately. But I did manage to get plucked up for a daily haiku!
https://haikuniverse.com/haiku-by-julie-allyn-johnson-5/
I'm excited to share 3 poems in the Anthropocene Poetry Journal published this month. I'd only ever had two poems in any journal before, so this was a first. I think I missed last month's brag so I'm sharing one from October too in the museum of americana! Congrats to all with recent publications!
https://www.anthropocenepoetry.org/post/3-poems-by-anne-graue
https://themuseumofamericana.net/2023/10/10/americana-stories-the-food-court-poetry-3/
My short fiction appeared in Monkeybicycle this month: https://monkeybicycle.net/tourists/
Thanks for all the encouragement and information you provide, Becky!
Congrats everyone! I have two poems in the new issue of New Letters:
https://x.com/poetalicewhite/status/1720040805904113667
https://x.com/poetalicewhite/status/1722214931964243992
I had one flash published which is one of the ones I’m most proud of - Alligators and Icebergs-
https://prsmmnlit.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/dave-nash/
I wrote this in August as part of the SmokeLong Summer and I will be reading it at the next SmokeLong open mic which is tomorrow at 11 NY time. I got another piece accepted last week that fits with this and hope to read that too.
This is another first issue publication. I’ve had success with these and I find them on Chill Subs by sorting on Recently Added.
Persimmon Lit was wonderful to work with and I love the aesthetics of the site. I recommend submitting for issue 2.
Woo-hoo! I finally got in Typishly this past Tuesday: https://typishly.com/2023/11/21/solar-phenomena-1991/
How it happened: I was browsing poems for inspiration and found one somewhere about a couple and an eclipse. I said to myself, Self, YOU have a killer eclipse story, why can't you make THAT into a poem? So I set it down and popped it with my current batch into the Typishly's "Poetry Tuesday" call on Monday night. I have probably sent Typishly 50 poems over the past three years, all more worked over and vetted than this one, which just goes to show you...something.
Earlier in the month, I had a poem published in my old fav Sad Girl Diaries:
https://www.sadgirldiaries.com/post/kilter-julie-benesh
I also had a few acceptances that will be published next year in Closed Eye Open and Wild Roof Review, both places I've been in previously and know to be nice to engage with.
And my Advanced Reader Copies of my full-length debut collection INITIAL CONDITIONS have arrived and if anyone wants to review, please let me know!
https://saddleroadpress.com/initial-conditions.html
I have a haunted-house story (flash fiction) in the new issue of South Florida Poetry Journal (https://www.southfloridapoetryjournal.com/flash-31-nov-23.html) and was delighted to participate in their online launch reading earlier this month. It was a great opportunity for all the contributors to share our work in our own voices, and I really appreciate SoFloPoJo's approach to fostering community.
My translation of a short story by French author Monique Debruxelles appears in the new issue of the Irish lit mag Southword (print only, https://munsterlit.ie/bookshop/southword-45/). I had tried them last year with a different story by the same author and got a personal rejection, and I'm so glad this piece turned out to be a good fit. The editors are super transparent about their (daunting) submission statistics, which made last year's rejection feel like a big win and this year's acceptance feel more or less miraculous. And on a personal note, I'm thrilled that my family and friends in Ireland can pick up my work in a beautifully produced print journal at their local bookshops!
Congrats to all those with news to share!
Alas, these days I get nothing but rejections, some with notes to submit again. Revision is my priority for some essays and poems.
A book project also fell apart when my collaborator dropped out. I approached another potential collaborator. He said he was too busy.
Congrats to everyone writing, reading, and submitting. The journey is worth celebrating regardless of the results! I counted 11 days in a row of rejections so far this month, but I look back on the Autumn issue of Panoply which published my glosa "Circuit Breaker." https://panoplyzine.com/circuit-breaker-by-jeanne-blum/ This was my first attempt at a glosa poem. I had been inspired by a workshop at the Theodore Roethke house in Saginaw conducted by Marion Starling Boyer whose Ice Hours collection had just been published and introduced me to the form. I agonized over this poem for weeks, and shared it with my first reader Storm Ainsely before submitting. The editor did not ask for any changes.
Congrats to everyone who's had publications this month. To those feeling frustrated by rejections, keep at it! I'm thrilled to have had two poems published in recent weeks: "Crooked" in Southern Poetry Review, and "Born of Water" in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. Both are print-only journals that I highly recommend. And both poems had a years-long journey to get to this point. "Crooked" started out as a villanelle, but I workshopped it with a group who convinced me that it didn't need to be so wordy, so I stripped it down. Once it was accepted, the editor worked with me on one word that didn't seem right to him. "Born of Water" was written when my son was an infant, and now he's about to turn 12. It's a matter of revision and finding the right home.
One of my favorite journals, ONE ART, took one of my favorite poems. https://oneartpoetry.com/2023/11/19/a-fine-appendix-by-deborah-bacharach/?fbclid=IwAR3OY4dGBkAcYmzLi-lbx6zt_2fU24lLYLq-cdY_v_rpdjsw9LkbkhT0hyw
My soft horror short story "The Guidebook" appears this coming Tuesday, November 28, at Pyre, https://www.pyremagazine.com. All acceptances are good, but the editor sent me an especially positive message about how much he enjoyed it, making the acceptance that much better.
Feeling very lucky to have a story, "Tiger on My Roof," in the new (print) issue of Epiphany. This comes after 24 rejections, and I have nothing but great things to say about the beautiful issue it came out in and working with the editors there.
Not a story, but an interview about it. Between the time I submitted and the time I learned it was a flash fiction finalist for the London Independent Story Prize, I wrote two companion pieces. I elected not to have the first piece published with LISP because I think the trio is stronger than each piece separately. Plus, publishing one might decrease the odds for the other two. Like that logic? Have others here made similar or different decisions?https://www.londonindependentstoryprize.co.uk/post/lisa-k-buchanan
In January 2021, I submitted an essay, "Talismans," to North Dakota Quarterly. First time, only submission. It was accepted a week later, but somehow was missed in the print journal. It finally got published in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue. Much to my delight, it is listed as a "Notable Essay" in the Best American Essays of 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. I wonder: if it if hadn't been skipped over and then printed later, would it have been selected?
https://ndquarterly.org/2023/11/09/erica-gosss-essay-talismans/
Last week, my poem "No presumption of innocence" was curated by On the High Literary Magazine for its Film Noir issue. I did not revise the poem to fit the theme but I had a strong feeling the theme would shine a spotlight some of the poem's key images. I held the poem until the submission period and did not submit anywhere else. Happily, the editors took it and the poem has a home with a number of other very good poems and short stories that are made even stronger by how they read together.
There's a bit of a spillover from Halloween (sorry, I know, it's old hat already, the calendar marker has moved!).
- Kings River Life published my "tender" Renfield/vampire story, "Wolf Cub" - https://kingsriverlife.com/10/28/halloween-short-story-wolf-cub/ (thank you, Lori!)
- I had a super cool one in Black Cat Weekly, "An Arm and a Leg" - https://blackcatweekly.com/b/HQBkY - working with the editor to take what was a riddle of a story and turn it into a solid (and much longer) piece. Very proud of that one.
- I also made the Crimeucopia "Crank it up" anthology with story dear to my heart: "Borrowed" - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1909498521
- Bewildering Stories reprinted an old fantasy piece (that was before I turned to a life of crime!), called "Willowmore" - http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue1022/willowmore.html
And, drum roll, tadaaah! I signed a contract for my PI book. It'll come out next year and it's been a long, long journey. To say I'm stoked is to put it mildly.
I have submitted to Nunum many times without success but I was delighted to receive this recently 'Thank you for sending us "Detourmentia". We love it, you popped our heads, and we would love to include it in our next anthology.'
Delighted to be included in Marsha Ingrao's first Story Chat anthology, now available on Amazon. https://tinyurl.com/2n9u94je
And BarBar just published my short poem 'Shanghai' and presented it beautifully. https://bebarbar.com/2023/11/22/shanghai/
And of course it's not too late to enter Witcraft's Monthly Humour Competition for a chance to be published and win modest money. https://duotrope.com/duosuma/submit/monthly-humour-competition-C6KF8
I’ve had a short poem called “The Lost Ship Amistad” accepted by Pure Slush as part of their Lifespan series Vol 11 called Loss. They don’t publish online, only in print. The poem is about losing a friendship that went back to the 1960s. The person alluded to in the poem is the same age as me and had come over from France with his wife and child to work at the same Polytechnic as me in Coventry. Our families became very close, and he and I used to play squash together regularly. After three years, he was appointed to a role as éditeur with the UN in Geneva, but we kept in touch via emails and even met up on a couple of occasions, once in France and once in Seville. Yet earlier this year we had a falling out over some minor disagreement. I suppose the crotchetiness of old men had something to do with it. Anyway, he stopped contacting me.
As there are such a lot of abstract nouns in English ending in -ship, I decided to compare our loss of friendship with a ship lost at sea. After revising it several times until I was satisfied with it, I sent it to Pure Slush because the editor had published my writing on previous occasions, and I had met him in Seville in June this year when he was on extended leave doing a grand tour of Europe from Australia. Maybe the lavish way my wife and I entertained him encouraged him to accept the poem. :-)
My story "Shoe Shoe Sh'Boogie" is included in the newly published crime fiction anthology from Murderous Ink Press, "Crimeucopia: Crank It Up!". (Sharing pages with fellow Lit Mag News denizen Martine Proctor, who also has a story there.)
https://www.amazon.com/Crimeucopia-Crank-Up-Various-Authors/dp/1909498521
(also available via Bookshop.org and other non-Death Star outlets; also multiple e-book alternatives)
"Shoe Shoe..." is one of the longer stories I've written and published in years, close to 10,000 words. I started sending it out in January, first to a novelette contest (that rare creature) and three other places that didn't want it either. Not as many options for something that length. Murderous Ink doesn't take simsubs, but it was worth the shot, and they didn't take too long to decide. Part of the impetus for the writing of it came from trying something with "criminal fuck-ups" ala Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen.
November's been a great month for me - two new acceptances plus a feminist prose poem in Issue 8 of surrealist-inspired journal "Exist Otherwise".
I've had an ekphrastic prose poem written from a Dali painting accepted into "The Ekphrastic Review" for their first-ever print anthology - "The Memory Palace". I wrote "Dali Speaks to Me in Dreams" especially for the sub call. Entries were judged blind. TER's editor is collaborating with Clare MacQueen of Macqueen's Quinterly for the project, due out early 2024. The writing on TER never fails to inspire, so I'm stoked to be included. This is my 3rd publication with TER. I know others submit to TER here, so I'll be curious to see if others have a similar announcement to celebrate!
I've also had a villanelle with Gothic tones accepted into Quill & Crow's monthly print/online journal of Gothic fiction & poetry. Theme: Darkest Endings. I wrote it on a Friday 2 weeks ago (especially for the call), revised it over the weekend, submitted the following Monday and it was accepted two days later! I either found them on Twitter or via the Authors Publish website. They're mainly a literary Gothic/horror book publisher with an eye for beautiful cover designs, based in the US. They don't pay a lot for poems, but I'm always grateful for even token payments. I queried the exclusivity period in the contract (2 years) & they've very kindly revised it for me. The TER project (above) was a 4-month long wait, so it was delightful to have my raven-themed poem wing its way to roost so swiftly. The editors tell me it will be out on December 1st.
Here's the link to my prose poem - my 3rd piece published with Exist Otherwise:
https://existotherwise.cc/image-matrix/
Thanks, Lisa B., for already reading. Congrats to everyone for their acceptances & diving in now to read your literary gems! :)
Hi Becky, I have had a story published this month in the Australian poetry journal, oxygen. Editor Cheryl Howard was accepting non-fiction for the first time. I knew of the magazine through my writing group. One day a member mentioned having seen a Samuel Beckett play, and lo! ... 'Waiting for Beckett' - my piece - was born. I'd had the story in 'my back pocket' for years and finally it had found its right time and place.
I'm going to have my first poetry publication appear in the February issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). I've had work turned down there before, so I'm honored they excepted this elegiac poem. Ironically, the title is "When?"
There’s something to learned advice shared by Poet Laureates and a face near mine on a ZOOM call with one (or hundreds of) fellow poets alike – throw nothing away! One poem about a girdle and another about a bra, written in 2017 and 2022 respectively, morphed into Poetic Foundations published by 805 Lit & Art four days ago (November 21, 2023)!
Poetic Foundations
Online - Volume 9, Issue 3
https://www.805lit.org/9-3-poetry-suzanne-austin-hill
Early this year under the inspiration of my Poetry Muse (PM) I combined and revised those poems into one I thought suitable for submission. No editors were involved. Whether accepted or declined, my PM reminded me I had a third poem written. “Sometimes this is the reward.” she whispered. I submitted it; my contribution was declined.
At the height of COVID, an email from 805 Lit + Art (an award-winning litmag) appeared miraculously in my inbox. It was a call for pieces celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. As a female, BIPOC, senior poet, I responded. In August 2020, The Lady in the Pictures was published in print and audio forms.
As of this writing, the 805 has published four of my pieces (and a few photographs). As a FL resident, I couldn’t be more pleased with the resulting presentations by this FL-based team of librarians and writers.
Suzanne S. Austin-Hill
Author
Sixty-seven Pages from the Heart
<amazon.com>
I reviewed the proofs for a piece about disability coming out next week in a zine called Knee Brace (love the name!) and the copy editor was pin point accurate in her few suggestions. "Plan B" was just published in Opal Age Tribune which has a lovely website well worth reading. I loved the vibe of this lit mag which is why I submitted. Found them, I think, on Duotrope. Here's a PDF of the piece: https://writewithoutborders.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Plan-B.pdf
I've been publishing so much during and since the pandemic that I've kind of lost count, but I think these two personal essay above make my 61st and 62nd CNF pubs in that time. The ideas keep coming, as when I was walking my Westies this week and studying the leafless trees and thought: "You should write about how they make you feel--" That would be new for me since my personal essays have not included nature as a subject.
On a totally different note, I'm a few chapters away from finishing a novel that would be my 28th book. On the drive back from my master class, I realized my next step in the book could be simplified. I'm not ready to finish, but I've let go of an overly complex scene that needed a trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts and figured out something more dramatic, so I'm relieved.
I taught a 3-hour master class earlier in the month in the personal essay for Rochester Writers in Michigan. We had a lovely room with a conference table, great snacks, comfy chairs and every one of a dozen seats was taken. That's a great size for a class of any kind--at MSU, they crammed 25 and sometimes 30 people in CW classes. This master class built off the memoir session I had taught for the Rochester Writers conference two weeks before, in that I recommended dealing with memoir material in a short form first as a way to get started and also get published. The master class was an exhilarating experience--all the joy of teaching without the hassle of doing grades (or coping with bureaucracy).
Congratulations to everyone! I have also been quite fortunate this month. One essay was a finalist for the Barnhill Prize from Longridge Review - didn't win, but was published: https://longridgereview.com/elizabeth-bird/
And another essay appeared in Open Door Magazine, in their themed issue on Fairytatales: https://www.opendoorpoetrymagazine.com/post/making-room-for-nora-elizabeth-bird
And finally, I have an essay in HerStry, which should be coming out this week. Just finished updating my website: www.lizbirdwrites.com.
A great month! I am excited that three of my flash CNF pieces were accepted by Variant Lit and will be published in January. I had a ghost story poem published Nov. 2 in Penumbra, and will have 3 poems published tomorrow in Synkroniciti! I've published in Synkroniciti several times, and the editor, Katherine McDaniel, is probably the nicest person on the planet, especially for emerging poets and writers.
My flash fiction "Palmed Love" went live today with Black Warrior Review's Boyfriend Village! https://bwr.ua.edu/project/palmed-love/
After my earlier post about 11 rejections in November, I got an acceptance today of a hybrid memoir "Sugar Bowl of the Universe," which I wrote in 2021 and have submitted 30 times, 22 of those declined, though two previous reviews stated that they had passed reluctantly. At one point, I did an edit to make sure that the narrator wasn't coming off as "too good to be true."
34 Orchard, a magazine of the uncanny, published a new story of mine in their issue #8, which came out November 10th. (They publish in Fall and Spring. The editor is the widely published Kristi Petersen Schoonover.) The issue is downloadable from their site as a pdf, where they gently request but don't require a donation of $1.99. The issue includes contributors living around the world, from Australia, Belgium, London, to the US and Canada. I had the pleasure of meeting a number of them via Zoom where we celebrated the issue launch and got acquainted --no reading, just a warm supportive gathering across great distance on the launch day. I'm in Miami, but my story is titled "Adultery in Modern Massachusetts." All the earlier issues are also available. (I read several before I submitted.) https://34orchard.com/ ~Lynne Barrett
Hi, my CNF piece " The Horseback Riding Accident" is in Issue 15 of Spry Literary Journal-currently live this month. https://sprylit.com/archives/the-horseback-riding-accident/
I am excited to have it out in the world where it can be read, and I am pleased to be in the company of so many other gifted writers. I think I found Spry by perusing the various lists of respected Literary Magazines. My disappointment is it apparently Spry is only publishing once a year. It took a year between acceptance and publication. But in the writing life, one must be patient.
For the behind the scenes look at my process, I posted my "writer's notes" ( as this is a story about trauma) on my writer's blog, https://nadjamaril.com/2023/11/22/writers-notes-on-the-horseback-riding-accident-published-in-spry-literary-journal/
I had two poems and a haibun published in November as well as receiving honorable mention for a haiku by the Haiku Society of America [HSA] for its 2023 Harold G Henderson Haiku Award that also appeared in the Fall 2023 print edition of the society’s triannual publication Frogpond. Links for these publications are here:
https://amethystmagazine.org/2023/11/09/fogburst-a-poem-by-m-f-drummy/
https://www.streetcakemagazine.com/issue.html
https://scarletdragonflyjournal.wordpress.com/2023/11/page/5/
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/haikuawards/2023-henderson-judges.htm
The haiku came to me quickly while dog sitting last July in northern NM. “Fogburst” was written last winter and went through numerous revisions. “Hemingway in Pamplona” was written last year while living in Ecuador and - after recently changing the formatting quite a bit - was accepted by streetcake magazine.
The haibun started out as strictly a prose poem perhaps six months ago but after getting involved with a haiku workshop here in the Denver area I saw how it could maybe work as a haibun. I inserted one haiku at the beginning middle and end and was very pleased with the result. At that point it was immediately accepted for publication by the Scarlet Dragonfly Journal.
Except for the HSA contest everything else I found about on Duotrope. Many more accepted during November as well that will be coming out over the next several months.
SUBMIT SUBMIT SUBMIT!!
I have a piece in an anthology called “Instant Classic (That No One Will Read)”, a collection of satirical takes on writing and publishing. It just came out 3 days ago.
Link: https://traumbooks.com/instant-classic-that-no-one-will-read/
A lot of the pieces go pretty unhinged. I think it’ll be a fun read for authors especially.
Dear Friends,
November has been a good month for me. I got some poems accepted for publication, and two poems of mine got published this month. My haiku “Halloween” appeared in Scarlet Dragonfly Journal's special Halloween Issue (November, 2023). I wrote the poem in October 2022 when Jupiter was prominent in the night sky. Kathleen Trocmet edits this journal. Here is the link: https://scarletdragonflyjournal.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/final-special-issue-halloween-2023.pdf
Also, my tanka “Phone Call II” appeared in the new journal entitled the art of tanka #1 (fall/winter 2023) on page 10. This tanka is a revision of an old poem that I wrote in the 1990s and recently revised as a tanka. The editor of the art of tanka is Pamela A. Babusci. I never give up on a poem.
Best wishes for the holiday season!
Sincerely,
Janet Ruth Heller
My website is https://www.janetruthheller.com
I have published two books for children and five books for adults.
Last minute good news! I had an acceptance late last night on a flash fiction from Waccamaw Journal! I'm very happy. I also just had a story published by Flash Fiction Magazine.
Late to the party as well, but super proud and happy that my story “The Birch Trees” went up at Joyland yesterday. Link:
https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/the-birch-trees/
(A propos to a recent conversation on this very platform, I’m going to note that this story does happen to contain a sex scene and is a bit on the explicit side in general..)
I'm late to the party -- but I'm happy to be the caboose, if so!
My first haibun "Wintery Augury" was published in Haiku Canada Review (print only). Editor Mike Montreuil made two tiny edits and I appreciate him giving my piece such wonderful support. I have since put this piece on my website to share with my family and friends. Here's the link if you want to check it out!
https://agoldenhour.com/2023/11/16/winter-augury/
My poem "Clown Psalm" was a runner up in the Ledbury Poetry Contest this year Link to site:
https://ledburypoetry.org.uk/home/ledbury-poetry-competition-2023
Also the following news from The Slowdown:
On November 28th, the podcast The Slowdown, hosted by poet and professor Major Jackson, will feature Elisabeth Murawski's poem "Kinds of Silence," originally published in Southern Poetry Review. Episodes are available for listening at slowdownshow.org and on all podcast platforms.
Happy holidays to everyone and congrats on all your hard work.
I had a poem, With Pain, come out in Reapparition Journal. I love the theme of the journal as they focus on chronic illness, which I write about a lot but their site has ad pop-ups which I hate, so yeah.
https://www.reapparitionjournal.org/withpain
Also, Stoneboat Literary Journal published my poem, Flood the Rivers.
https://www.stoneboatwi.com/issue-13-2/fairbrother
And I found out today, a poem published in Honeyguide Magazine, Piglet Squid, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. They were great to work with and it's lovely to see your work accompanied by full color art these days.
Of course, the rejection pile was large but I try to smile at the successes.
My CFN piece, "The Bridge," was accepted at Jimson Weed--print only, so no link unfortunately! I submitted it to ten places, got rejected by two prior to being accepted. I'm thrilled because it's the first thing I've submitted since making the decision to focus on getting smaller pieces out in the world while I work on a book. I'm looking forward to having a robust practice of submitting, which actually feels fun, instead of dreadful, which is how I thought it would feel!