Wild Lit Mags Couldn't Drag Me Away!
The Drift has new funding source; interviews with Editors of Electric Literature, Taco Bell Quarterly; year-end anthologies; jobs at Paris Review & Bellevue Literary Review; 100+markets & more
Welcome to the bi-weekly news roundup!
Greetings Lit Mag-o-Lanterns,
Big news for The Drift Magazine: David Zwirner—gallery owner, philanthropist and, according to Forbes Magazines, one of America’s “most powerful art dealers”—will now offer financial support to the journal. Artforum reports,
“David Zwirner today announced a partnership with two-year-old literary magazine The Drift that will see the blue-chip gallery become the lead funder of the triannual publication. Zwirner’s involvement will allow the magazine to plan years ahead, undertake more ambitious projects, and establish itself as a platform for new voices and ideas. The Drift will maintain complete editorial independence under the arrangement. Beginning in spring of next year, David Zwirner will host an annual gala for the magazine.”
Meanwhile, a handful of interviews popped up recently.
In a conversation with El País, author and McSweeney’s Founder Dave Eggers discusses recent ordeals at The Believer— “there was a small scandal…a man working for the magazine did a zoom call naked from the waist down…And then they wanted to sell [the magazine] to restore the university’s good name. A pornography site bought it.” (I covered bathtub gate here and here, and sex-toy-gate here.) As to McSweeney’s recent re-acquisition of The Believer, Eggers observes,
“I mean, it might be fun, but it’s been years since it belonged to us. It’s weird to start doing something again when you haven’t done it for so long. What I really like doing is getting up and reading for three hours every morning and going to my boat to write with birds, fishermen and sea lions all around me...”
Over at Scene, the Editor of Electric Literature, Denne Michele Norris, offers this advice to writers:
“Whether you are published or not, the task becomes more and more simple, I think, as you move forward. The task is to continue writing, continue reading. Keep traversing this road we’ve chosen, even if you can’t see very far in front of you. As my mother would say, that’s the time to step out on faith. Living life as a writer, ultimately, is about stepping out on faith.”
At Eater, Taco Bell Quarterly Editor M.M. Carrigan talks about the magazine’s origin and writerly insecurities:
“[I]n 2019 I was like, I want to be a writer again. And what do you do when you want to be a writer? Of course, you go on lit Twitter. And I decided to make a joke. I’m going to make the Taco Bell Quarterly, because I felt like a Taco Bell and that’s how it started. The humor comes out of my insecurity, and that is my relationship to literary magazines. An insecurity that I am not good enough. This is why I named it very deprecatingly, the Taco Bell Quarterly.”
For those of you looking for new magazines and ideas about where to submit, the year-end anthologies are always a great place to start.
Flash Fiction America will come out in February and is now up for pre-order. Edited by John DuFresne, Sherrie Flick and James Thomas, the anthology includes writing that was published this year in a range of lit mags, including Hobart, Ploughshares, Wigleaf and more.
The Best American Poetry 2022, edited by Matthew Zapruder and David Lehman came out last month, and includes poems from The Yale Review, The Rumpus, Incessant Pipe and more.
Best American Short Stories 2022, edited by Andrew Sean Greer and Heidi Pitlor, and Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee and Robert Atwan, will both come out in November. Featured stories and essays are from Conjunctions, AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Territory and others.
For those of you on the hunt for jobs and editorial work, here’s what’s around:
The Paris Review is seeking CIA operatives. Just kidding. They seek a Business Manager and Digital Manager.
Bellevue Literary Review is seeking interns (a paid position).
And for those of you ready to send your latest and greatest out into the stratosphere:
Erika Dreifus’s latest newsletter is chock full of fabulous opportunities.
The Masters Review has 10 Deadlines for Contests Ending This Month
Erica Verrillo has posted 46 Writing Contests in October 2022 - No entry fees and 100 Calls for Submissions in October - Paying markets
Authors Publish has posted 37 Themed Submission Calls for Writers for October, 2022and 35 Wonderful International Literary Journals.
As for us, so much will be happening this month! In case you missed the news, I’ll be chatting soon with the editors of Gasher Journal, The Opiate, Latin American Literature Today and Wild Roof Journal.
I’ll also be hosting the usual fun Submissions Q & A and Submissions Study Hall sessions.
And Lit Mag Reading Club has begun! Thanks to everyone who has supported this endeavor and helped spread the word. We are currently reading Cleaver’s summer issue, #38, and Story Magazine, issue #14. The editors of these magazines will come chat with reading club participants later this month. There’s still plenty of time to join the club and read these magazines. Click here to get the Story discount.
Registration links for the info sessions and lit mag club editor Q & A will be sent out very soon. In the meantime, save the dates, subscribe and hop aboard!
And that you daydreamers and sleepwalkers, you makers of mental maps that let you travel deep into magical memory goldmines, you spelunkers into the swampy subterranean of your own swervy subconscious and you who are an inquiring mind who wants to know, and know even more, and know more still, you who aim daily to axe the frozen sea within and you who fail better and better all the time, you who never met a metaphor you didn’t snake up a tree and you whose similes are as silly as putty as string as slippery sea moss slime, you out there, guzzling ghazals by the gallon, slugging your sonnets into some strange singing shape, you everywhere, working and churning, toiling and wondering, wandering through mist while all the while it beats and beats, somewhere deep and true, this thump, this thump, this thump, is the news in literary magazines.
Have a most wonderful week, pals.
Fondly,
Becky
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Hi Becky,
First, I'm learning so much from reading Lit Mag News Roundup! I'm a physician, also working on my MFA.
My question is, how do I register for interviews with editors and the Lit Mag Reading Club?
Thanks!
Joe