Take me Down to the Paradise Lit Mags!

Open letter from FAIR to Submittable; open letter from The Authors' Guild to Generative AI Leaders; a student's post-pandemic lit mag revival; White Review on hiatus; jobs; markets; advice and more

Welcome to our bi-weekly news roundup!

---

Over the weekend, a reader shared with me an open letter created by FAIR (the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism). It is addressed to Submittable and is Regarding Discriminatory Practices by Literary Journals.

From FAIR:

Information about discriminatory submission requirements was recently reported to FAIR about federally-funded literary journals. While many journals offer to waive submission fees in order to accommodate authors and artists facing economic hardships, many are unfortunately conflating economic need with race, skin color, or ancestry, thereby providing differential pricing to authors and artists based on their immutable traits. When entities receive Federal financial assistance, this discriminatory practice violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (and, as applicable, the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, from which Title VI is derived). 

Following the decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC, the law is clear: “[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. And the Equal Protection Clause … applies ‘without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality’ – it is ‘universal in [its] application.”

We are proud to have sent formal legal letters to 17 literary journals to notify them of their violations and to ask them to amend their submission requirements in order to treat all authors and artists equally. But we are not stopping there.

Nearly all literary journals currently use Submittable.com to receive submissions for publication. Submittable.com’s Customer Terms of Service require its customers to adhere to the rights of third parties. So we are asking influential thought leaders to join us in signing an open letter to Submittable.com’s CEO, asking that the company notify its literary journal customers that they may not provide differential treatment to users based on race, skin color, or national origin.

The letter currently has over 200 signatories. Magazines cited in the letter include Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Ecotone, Black Warrior Review, CRAFT Literary, Witness, and several more.

A second open letter was also crafted recently, this one by The Author’s Guild and addressed “to Generative AI Leaders.” “The Authors Guild's Open Letter to Generative AI Leaders calls on the CEOs of OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft to obtain consent, credit, and fairly compensate writers for the use of copyrighted materials in training AI.”

The letter states,

We ask you, the leaders of AI, to mitigate the damage to our profession by taking the following steps:

1. Obtain permission for use of our copyrighted material in your generative AI programs.

2. Compensate writers fairly for the past and ongoing use of our works in your generative AI programs.

3. Compensate writers fairly for the use of our works in AI output, whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.

The letter has over 15,000 signatories including a range of authors, poets and literary journal editors.

Plus a signature from at least one hilarious jokester:

In other news, at The Nation, David Klion writes about the new-ish magazine Liberties. Liberties is mainly a “culture and politics” magazine, though it does accept poetry submissions and they are “keenly interested in discovering and welcoming new writers.”

Klion’s analysis is largely critical, though he concludes,

After reading the first 11 issues of Liberties more or less cover to cover—something I would be shocked if anyone other than Wieseltier or Marcus has ever done—I’ll confess that part of me is rooting for their venture to succeed. They’re right about one thing: The Internet has become a deeply dispiriting place, and there is something romantic about committing so unapologetically to sprawling print essays…

At The Middlebury Campus, college senior Liv Cohen has written a moving account of what students at her school lost during the pandemic. I don’t typically highlight student-only lit mags, but Cohen and her peers deserve a hat tip for fighting to keep their university lit mag alive. (Note: This is not the national magazine Blackbird out of Virginia Commonwealth University.)

Cohen writes,

[O]ne of the unfortunate consequences of the pandemic was the decline and extinction of countless student-run organizations and clubs…Some clubs fell to the wayside without the mentoring that would typically take place. Middlebury’s oldest literary and visual arts journal — Blackbird — was one such casualty. Blackbird was last published in the Spring of 2021. Soon, Blackbird will officially be lost in the collective memory of the student body come spring graduation. 

For a liberal arts school, this is an enormous loss. At Middlebury, upholding the arts, and honing and celebrating student voices must be a priority. Thus, Emma Johnson (one of the last to be published in BlackBird) and I are resurrecting the Bird. 

Meanwhile, England’s The White Review has announced an indefinite hiatus.

It is with great regret that we announce that The White Review is going on a hiatus and ceasing its day-to-day publishing for an indefinite period.

The White Review is a registered charity and relied on Arts Council England funding for a substantial portion of its annual budget between 2011-2021. The organization has not been granted funding in three successive applications in the years since. Despite our best efforts, the associated effects of the cost of living crisis and the increase in production costs, in tandem with reduced funding, has meant that The White Review has not been able to publish a print issue since No. 33 in June 2022.

On Twitter, author Otegha K. Uwagba replied to the announcement:

This is shameful. The White Review has been a kingmaker for some of the best literary authors working today. How sad to think of the loss to literature, the work that will never see the light of day because the philistines who pass for our government don’t see value in the arts.

On a happier note, if you live in or near Portland, Maine, you might want to check out a new poetry festival, organized by Littoral Books, Back Cove Books and Hole in the Head Review, to take place October 8th. “Editorial director Agnes Bushell said the festival is open to people who already read and write poetry – and people who have never read and written it before.”

For those of you looking for submissions guidance, writer W. Todd Kaneko shared some great advice for deciding on small press publishers.

Over at the Chill Subs ‘stack, Ben Davis breaks down how he uses spreadsheets to power the excellence of Chill Subs. The piece also offers useful information for editors, “in case any editors of smaller mags are reading and tired of email submissions. You can do this totally for free.”

And, if you would like to learn more about entering contests (and you haven’t yet tired of my face on YouTube), then you might enjoy this interview I did recently with Matty Dalrymple for The Indy Author on contest pros and cons.

For those of you seeking gainful employ in the hot hustle bustle of lit mag life:

The Upper New Review has multiple open volunteer positions.

Gutter seeks a Managing Editor.

Orion’s Belt seeks editors and readers.

Fiery Scribe Review seeks editors.

Uncharted seeks readers.

For those of you seeking homes for your latest & greatest:

At Sub Club, Ben Davis (who never sleeps, apparently), has posted a list of 75 Literary Magazines That Pay $100+ for Fiction.

Ben is also offering a free service:

Tell Me About Your Writing, I'll Recommend a Magazine

Please, if he recommends a journal for you, consider a subscription to their newsletter, a donation, a case of wine shipped overseas, coffee gift cards, a pet bird…something, anything, to say thank you to these extremely hard-working people.

(If you send them a pet bird, please do not say it was my idea.)

Erika Dreifus has posted this month’s list of “dozens of carefully curated, fee-free opportunities that pay writers for their fiction, poetry, & nonfiction.”

Erica Verrillo has 92 Calls for Submissions in October 2023 - Paying markets and 46 Writing Contests in October 2023 - No entry fees.

Authors Publish has 35 Themed Calls and Contests for October 2023 and 24 Approachable Literary Journals.

---

As for us, in case you missed it, I posted the 2023-2024 Lit Mag Reading Club schedule on Friday. I’m so excited to read and discuss all these journals with you!

Please note that the date for the interview with Anna Lena Phillips has been changed from the 24th to the 26th, to give us a bit more time to read the issue.

If you have not yet ordered your discounted copy of Ecotone, there’s still plenty of time. There is also a great deal of work available online. All are welcome in the Lit Mag Reading Club!

Also this month, we will have our regular lit mag chat session and I will be interviewing Editor Steve Halle, of Spoon River Poetry Review. Info on dates and times will be coming soon.

---

And that you fearsome furies, daydreaming duly about your haunted house plans, you spooky spirits whistling in the eaves, you with your bubbling cauldron of secret spells, you with your cottony spider-webs winding their way down your window screens, you with your clattering piles of skeleton bones, you whose front yard is by now surely littered with disembodied hands, you with your mwa-ha-ha and you with your monster mash, you moon-howlers and sharp-fanged blood-suckers and you, out there, who mustn’t forget, no, not this year, please swear you won’t, because every year you forget! and now it’s your time, your time to not forget, and you will, that is you won’t, you, who will in other words remember that, after carving the pumpkin’s eyes and mouth and disemboweling its slimy stringy innards, finally, once and for all, it is vital to sprinkle the seeds with a bit of salt and roast them, because they really are delicious and have like a mega-ton of antioxidants, is the news in literary magazines.

Have a most spectacular week, pals.

Fondly,

Becky

---

Got a question, comment, brain freeze, lust for life, crime or punishment?

Know some friends, students, colleagues, estranged lovers, homesick park rangers, self-recriminating zookeepers or friendly neighbors who needs this newsletter right now?

Want to attend monthly info sessions, join the Lit Mag Reading Club, access this site’s full archive, and help sustain this project through the terrifying month of October and beyond?

---

And now a word from our sponsor:

Now on Substack!

Five Things I’ve Learned, shares almost 100 90-minute and two-hour classes from writers, musicians, film directors, and other creative artists and thinkers. Subscribe to MyFiveThings on Substack and get $10 off your first ticket to any individual upcoming or on-demand class. Then, go to myfivethings.com to check out personal video invitations to great upcoming classes from writers like Cheryl Strayed and Andre Dubus III, or singer-songwriter Valerie June.