Insights from Judging a Writing Contest
Hemingway Birthplace Home, Oak Park, IL I just wrapped up serving as one of the judges in the Hemingway Shorts contest sponsored by the Hemingway Foundation of Oak [...]
Hemingway Birthplace Home, Oak Park, IL I just wrapped up serving as one of the judges in the Hemingway Shorts contest sponsored by the Hemingway Foundation of Oak [...]
Today I bring you what I think is a most inspiring post: My longtime student Diane Hurles has shared here before how she managed to find her voice as a memoir [...]
I haven't written much about submitting work to literary magazines lately, mainly because I've been slacking off in that department. But yesterday I got back in submissions mode and came [...]
Today I mailed off two photos to the Starved Rock Photo Contest. Sounds straightforward, but it was quite a production. First, photos could not be submitted electronically. Rather, you had [...]
Every so often, when my students' work reaches the stage where workshop participants say, "You should send this out," the initial joy turns into bafflement: How do I actually do [...]
The past few days I've become obsessed with creating a book in blurb, as I am handling the layout of the literary magazine my son's school is publishing. It's been [...]
Tracks in the snow on our cabin's deck this morning... While I've been trying not to freeze (see photo) at the writers conference I'm attending in northern Virginia where it [...]
A story might catch you unaware but if you stick with it, it might lead somewhere! Congratulations to my longtime student Diane Hurles who stuck with her story through many rewrites [...]
Since I'm always waxing about how to get the submissions process done right, I thought I'd share, for a change, the story of my own worst mishap. In February of 2010, [...]
Many of my students wonder how to write the cover letter to send along with a submission to a literary magazine, so I thought I'd devote a post to that aspect [...]
It might be obvious to follow the submission guidelines of each literary magazine you submit to, but I've been tripped up myself because I wasn't diligent enough, or thought I knew [...]
Don't get me wrong: I love online submissions. But this morning, after submitting a few manuscripts online in a manner of minutes, I came across a literary journal that is not [...]
In my opinion, a literary journal that does not accept simultaneous submissions is the bane of a writer's existence (to use a cliché) because this means a journal is arrogant [...]
I haven't written about submissions to literary magazines for a while because many of them are published by universities and thus adhere to the academic calendar of taking the summer [...]
My take on writing contests was first published in Tiny Lights, but it's been a while so I'm offering this update. A few years ago, at one of my MFA residencies, a panel [...]
Creative Nonfiction magazine has really spruced up its looks and contents, and they are currently running a micro essay contest on Twitter that's fun to watch: Tiny Truths Daily Contest. Once [...]
If you’ve been lucky enough to receive “ink” from an editor on a rejection slip – ink meaning a handwritten note saying something like “nice work, send us more” – [...]
Wonderful clarification from Katie Shea of Caren Johnson Literary Agency on what memoir is not: a story of your life (that would be an autobiography). Here's her answer regarding memoir manuscripts [...]
...or as the director of my MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, Fred Leebron, likes to say: “Writing is a game of attrition. Don’t attrish.” This means don’t give [...]
Dad's love: "Checked your oil lately?" (As posted by DrumHeart23 on SMITH Magazine) The quote above is my favorite six word memoir contribution so far on SMITH Magazine's dad project. [...]
My listings of the best literary magazines for nonfiction as well as the second and third best focused on print magazines. Of course some of these also publish content online but [...]
The next best thing after having a manuscript accepted for publication is withdrawing it from other magazines you’ve submitted it to. I’ve been doing that today and I must say [...]
My friend Tracy Crow started as nonfiction editor at literary magazine Prime Number a week ago. Click here to read her insights now that she's on the receiving end of [...]
This maybe should have been the first rule in literary magazine submissions because before you need to worry about developing a system (see my post of May 27), you need to have [...]
As an aspiring literary writer, you sooner or later need to submit your writing to literary magazines if you want to get published. Having a system helps:1. Develop two lists: [...]
Blogger restored my post that fell victim to their May 12 outage, so here it is again: Adding to my listing of the best literary magazines for nonfiction, following are the [...]
View from my bedroom at Joyce's house I’m currently visiting my longtime writer friend Joyce Finn in her sunny paradise in Sun City Hilton Head, South Carolina. We met many [...]
"Pregnancy is poetry. Parenting is prose." (As heard on Twitter May 4 via SMITH Magazine) What a priceless assessment of motherhood! In honor of Mother's Day, check out SMITH Magazine's Six-Word [...]
Following up on my list of January, I’ve just updated my personal ranking of literary magazines with the Pushcart Prize 2011 information. I list magazines that publish literary nonfiction, namely [...]
Today I found three envelopes addressed to me in my own handwriting in my mailbox. I immediately know what those are: rejection notices from literary journals. Because if a journal [...]
Listen in – the journey to publishing can take many roads: This recording captures an interesting discussion about the publishing experience that I was part of at an author’s roundtable last [...]
I found this call for submissions on Brevity, an online journal for brief creative nonfiction that I respect very much, and although I didn't know Bluestem before, I must say [...]
Once a story has been published, you know it’s good. That’s not to say a story that hasn’t been published isn’t good, but at least you’re over the hump of [...]
As I was doing my submissions last week, three opportunities for short nonfiction came across my desk, or rather, my laptop:The Bellingham Literary Review is notoriously hard to get into [...]
How likely are you to receive two acceptances for publication in one day? Highly unlikely, I should say, until the very thing happened yesterday. I checked one email account to find [...]
My writer friend Nancy Kopp says one of her goals for this year is to submit more, write more, read more. But what does "more" mean? Is that one submission [...]
For those of you whose New Year’s resolutions include getting published or publishing more: The first rule of the submission game is: Be discriminate, meaning don’t submit your writing just [...]