Our November/December issue features a special section on literary magazines, including interviews with editors, articles on getting paid for your work, slow response times, and how to navigate the editing process; a conversation with Ross Gay, author of the essay collection Inciting Joy; a profile of Celeste Ng, author of the novel Our Missing Hearts; our seventh annual 5 Over 50 roundup of debut authors; an interview with Carmen Giménez, the new publisher of Graywolf Press; meditations on a writer’s practice by Carl Phillips; writing prompts; contest deadlines; and more.
November/December 2022
Features
Seeds to Share: A Q&A With Ross Gay
In his new essay collection, Inciting Joy, prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay turns our attention to what brings us together, extolling the pleasures of collaboration and the recognition of what connects us rather than divides us.
Ravenous With Story: A Profile of Celeste Ng
In her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, best-selling author Celeste Ng continues to explore the social and political pressures that shape family dynamics—this time in a story set in a contemporary dystopia that feels frighteningly familiar.
5 Over 50: 2022
Essays by debut authors Madhushree Ghosh, Sari Botton, David Santos Donaldson, Shareen K. Murayama, and Jane Campbell.
Publishing Spotlight: Literary Magazines
The Third Eye: Meet the Editors on the Other Side of the Desk
Five editors at some of the most innovative and finely curated literary journals around talk about the joys and difficulties of their work, from supporting new writers to sending more rejections than they’d like.
What to Read Now
A review of thirteen literary magazines, including the Bennington Review, American Chordata, and the Margins, that will give even the most jaded reader a sense of renewed hope for the possible.
Getting Paid
While some literary magazines pay up to a few hundred dollars for literary work, many don’t pay at all. A published writer offers an overview of how to find paying markets, when to publish for free, and tips for a submission strategy.
Why So Slow?
The volume of submissions that most literary magazines receive is a driving factor in slow response times. Complicating matters is the popularity of online submissions managers, supply-chain issues, and other problems brought on by the pandemic.
How to Navigate the Editing Process
An experienced science writer, poet, author, and teacher offers tips to help writers emerge from the editing process professionally and emotionally intact, including how to establish a congenial and constructive relationship with your editor.
News and Trends
Freedom Reads
An organization founded and directed by Reginald Dwayne Betts seeks to bring the spirit of literature into prisons by installing libraries and inviting theater productions, book clubs, and world-class writers inside carceral walls.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Extinction Theory by Kien Lam and Liberation Day by George Saunders.
The Anthologist: A Compendium of Uncommon Collections
A look at four new anthologies, including Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic and When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journals.
Lit Mag Changes Exploitative Name
The Fall 2022 issue of Crazyhorse will be the last under a name that the editors now recognize as a “longstanding appropriation of Lakota culture.”
New Dictionary Seeks Public Input
The Oxford Dictionary of African American English, slated for release in 2025, will involve a three-year-long multidisciplinary research project compiling terms popularized by speakers of African American English.
Small Press Points: Black Lawrence Press
Black Lawrence Press’s Immigrant Writing Series was launched in response to a lack of book-publication options for immigrant writers, whose unique perspectives might not resonate with nonimmigrant editors.
Literary MagNet: Abigail Chabitnoy
The author of In the Current Where Drowing Is Beautiful highlights five journals that first published her poems, including Peripheries and the Capilano Review.
The Written Image: The Shape of Words
Dallas artist Simeen Farhat crafts text-inspired sculptures in a complex process that blends literary and figurative composition and reminds viewers of language’s physicality.
Q&A: Giménez Takes Helm at Graywolf
Graywolf Press’s new publisher and executive director discusses the shifting landscape of literary publishing, her multidisciplinary career, and what collaboration means to her.
The Practical Writer
Don’t Forget Joy: Working With an Independent Publicist as a Small Press Author
A poet and author offers tips for how to find and collaborate with a growing group of independent publicists who work specifically with poets and small press authors and whose help is available for far less than high-profile publicists.
The Literary Life
The Time Is Now: Writing Prompts and Excercises
Write a poem that reflects on your everyday language, a story that explores the inner life of your protagonist during a transition, or an essay about how the history of Thanksgiving affects the way you experience the holiday.
What We Are Carrying: Meditations on a Writing Practice
An acclaimed poet and professor explores writing as a lifelong apprenticeship, the difference between mastery and fluency, various forms of practice and discipline, and the importance of living one’s writing life attentively.