#13: 4/21/21
It's Wednesday, so you know what that means! HUMP DAY SUBMISSIONS! Because it's easy to fall off the submission train during the week I'm presenting you with 3 cool and very different small journals currently open for submissions to save you research time! Pick one of the three journals presented and read some of the pieces in your genre. If you're not digging them, check the next journal. Don't agonize over it, if you're not enjoying the writing or you don't feel your writing would fit in there move along to the next journal. If none of them seem to fit... maybe next week?
Journal 1: Redivider. Redivider is the grad-student-run literary print and online journal from Emerson University in Boston (also home of Emerson Review and Ploughshares). As always read their newest issue. Click here for their submission guidelines. They read no fee submissions via Submittable. Here is their editor's interview with Duotrope.
For Poetry: "Submit what you’re worried to send elsewhere. We want poems with teeth..." For Fiction: "We seek fiction submissions up to 8,000 words that are at once engaging, idiosyncratic, and humane. While our stories can range from the comically absurd to the understated and contemplative, we especially have a fondness for sharply drawn characters, alien but fully realized settings, and concentrated efforts to transgress the trappings of what has come to be known as “literary fiction.” Ultimately, we’re looking for stories that remind us exactly why we got wrapped up in literature in the first place."
From Duotrope: "The award-winning literary journal of The Ohio State University, The Journal contributes significantly toward the literary landscape of Ohio and the nation. The Journal seeks to identify and encourage emerging writers while also attracting the work of established writers to create a diverse and compelling magazine. The Journal has recently had poems reproduced in the Best American Poetry anthology. We are interested in quality fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and reviews of new books of poetry and prose."
Journal 3: The Common. The Common is the print literary magazine out of Amherst College. Check out their submission guidelines here. And of course, as usual, read samples from the most recent issue published in your genre to get a good idea of what they're looking for, and they read $3 submissions via Submittable.
"Finding the extraordinary in the common has long been the mission of literature. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas, The Common seeks to recapture an old idea. The Common publishes pieces of literature that embody particular times and places both real and imagined; from deserts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon: literature and art powerful enough to reach from there to here. In short, we seek a modern sense of place. In our hectic and sometimes alienating world, themes of place provoke us to reflect on our situations and both comfort and fascinate us. Sense of place is not provincial nor old fashioned. It is a characteristic of great literature from all ages around the world. It is, simply, the feeling of being transported, of “being there.”
From their website: "We seek stories, essays, poems, and dispatches that embody a strong sense of place: pieces in which the setting is crucial to character, narrative, mood, and language. We receive many submissions about traveling in foreign countries and discourage writers from submitting conventional travelogues in which narrators report on experiences abroad without reflecting on larger themes.."
Get your writing out there! You got this! I know it's mid-week, but spending just a little bit of time with reading well-crafted creative writing in the middle of the week it can keep your creativity a little fresher when the weekend comes around. I think, at least.
Also a gentle reminder that Sparked is reading submissions of writing from Notebooking Daily prompts, so send them work now! And if you thought this post was helpful, consider shooting me a buck or two for my own future submissions or to help pay writers for Sparked (which comes out of my pocket). No pressure though. I'm just trying to get better with the begging for pennies, submission fees in 2020 are pretty monumental and 2021 is shaping up to be just as bad!
