"We'll Make it Short Nonfiction." A Chat with Dinty W. Moore, Editor-in-Chief of Brevity

"The energy of the sentence..."

Hello! I come with news of this year’s first editor interview, newly wrapped.

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Dinty W. Moore, Editor-in-Chief of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.

For more than two decades, Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction has published well-known and emerging writers working in the brief essay form, along with craft essays and book reviews. Though still committed to the mission of publishing new and emerging writers, Brevity has been fortunate over the years to include the work of Pulitzer prize winners, NEA fellows, Pushcart winners, Best American authors, and writers from India, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Malaysia, The Netherlands, and Japan….

Work from Brevity has been anthologized and reprinted in venues including Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Utne Reader, the Short Takes anthology, Best American Essays, and many recent writing textbooks.

Dinty shared that he started the journal back in the early nineties, at a time when there were few online lit mags, let alone lit mags dedicated exclusively to flash nonfiction. At the outset, Dinty’s ambitions were modest. He was mostly trying to understand how to build a website. He hoped to receive a handful of submissions for his project.

Since then, Brevity has grown to become one of the leading sources for flash nonfiction. The site publishes a new issue three times per year, with all works under 750 words. They also publish a weekly blog, which contains essays on all aspects of craft, the writing life and publishing. Brevity has an editorial staff made up of volunteer readers and editorial assistants. They receive about 400 submissions per month, selecting 15 works of flash nonfiction per issue.

So what exactly do these editors like to see in submissions? What makes a great piece of flash nonfiction? “Compression,” Dinty said. “Every sentence has to do more than one thing.” Dinty emphasized that “the first sentence has to grab us,” but not in a gimmicky way. What will make an impact is language and voice—“the energy of the sentence.”

As you can imagine, Dinty has seen his share of flash nonfiction over the years. (The journal receives about three thousand submissions per year.) What are some changes he’s seen in the genre? Dinty told us about the exciting range of pieces they’ve published. This includes work that is “language-based,” work that is lyric, experimental, scene-based, as well as short pieces that cover a time sweep of decades. They’ve recently accepted a work that was mostly in Spanish.

“There are all kinds of ways to do it now,” Dinty said. His goal is to “represent a spectrum.” This means stylistically as well as in terms of diversity—diversity of race, ethnicity, economic class, life experience, and all other areas.

If flash nonfiction means true stories, how can writers share memories that might not be reliable? Can writers tell true stories of people other than themselves? What are common subjects these editors see a lot of in submissions? Do they gravitate toward political pieces? And should writers who receive a no-thank-you from Brevity keep trying?

For answers to all these questions and more, dear ones, you will have to tune in!

Brevity is open for submissions now. On January 15, Dinty will also be teaching a workshop: All Details Are Not Equal: The Power of Movement and Desire in Literary Description, which you can learn about here.

To everyone who came out today, thank you for tuning in! Your faces are the clear blue sky in my snow-white wintry day.

And, of course, thank you to Dinty for taking the time to take us behind the scenes of another lovely little magazine.

Happy viewing!

Views expressed by any guest in an interview do not necessarily reflect my own.