Fiction Submission Call, Teen Nostalgia Screenwriting, Team Updates and What We Published Last Month
Write or Die Magazine Updates: April 2025
Each month, you will receive this special newsletter with a recap of what our magazine published the month prior and what our editors have been up to. If you are new here, this is a different newsletter from the one we send out weekly about our writing workshops. Keep scrolling for more! <3
A Note from the EIC
Hey writers,
Spring is here, and with it comes that irresistible urge to clean out your Google Docs, open a fresh page, and start again. Or if you are me, an urgent and powerful need to get new curtains for the living room as a form of procrastination. (But also they look so good!) I like to think of a new month, especially one that brings on a new season, as a permission slip to reset and try something new. Spring feels like fresh ideas, daydreaming, note-taking, and new novel ideas.
What does Spring feel like for you?
We’re especially excited about two things this month: our big fiction contest is now open (send us your best!) and we’re beginning to gather pieces for our Threshold Reckoning issue. It’s shaping up to be something really special.
Happy writing, friends. Keep going.
<3
Kailey, EIC
Write or Die’s First Ever Fiction Contest — Now live!
🖤 General Submission Window 🖤
May 1 – July 1, 2025
🏆 Prizes 🏆
1st Place: $1000
2nd Place: $400
3rd Place: $200
Winning stories will be published in Write or Die Magazine.
💗 Guest Judge 💗
Nora Lange's debut novel Us Fools was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize by the Academy of Arts and Letters, is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, was named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her short writing is forthcoming in the Believer, has appeared in BOMB, Hazlitt, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Denver Quarterly, HTMLGIANT and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family and desperately misses Los Angeles.
👀 What She is Looking For 👀
Shock yourself. Take a risk. Loosen the reins of plot. Let the idea in your story shine. Get lost and call it found.
Other Categories We Are Currently Open For…
Fiction
Send us your short stories! We also have an expedited submission option where you can hear back within two weeks! Bonus: all fees go directly to pay our editors, who volunteer their time generously to make this magazine what it is <3
Creative Nonfiction
We are interested in essays that focus on the writing life and especially love work where the personal intersects with the critical.
Author Interviews
We accept pitches from interviewers interested in covering authors with a forthcoming or recently published book. We are especially interested in featuring books by debut authors and/or books published by indie presses.
↓ Click the button below for additional details about what we are looking for and how to submit it! ↓
We are swapping our recommendation this month to give you a little team update! We are so proud of everyone who makes this magazine and educational space possible, so we are spotlighting some of their achievements, publications, and upcoming events <3
Brittany Ackerman, our assistant editor, has a piece in the Spring issue of Culterate! Read “Key Food” here.
Nirica Srinivasan, our interviews editor, has been busy chatting with Vauhini Vara and Kevin Nguyen. She also works at a bookstore in Bangalore, where they just opened a new store. She has spent the better part of the last five months curating for it! Check it out here.
, our editor in chief, is deep in prep for The Wild Draft, a new cohort helping writers finish their novels. (now enrolling for June!) She also published a piece in TrashLight Press last month, called “Too Homeschooled to be Normal.”
, our senior editor, published her debut novel, Howling Women! If you haven’t already, you can order a copy here. Visit her Instagram for a look at all the various outlets she has been featured in this past month!
, our fiction editor, was published in The Rumpus! Read her powerful and heartbreaking piece, “Home is a Word Unspoken,” here.
, our fiction editor, published a detailed look at her query letter in
this week! Suzanne is always so generous with her resources and craft tips; if you are in the querying trenches with her, this piece is for you!Nicholas Claro, our fiction reader, has a collection of short stories now available for preorder! We all know how important pre-orders are to the life of a book, so be sure to grab a copy of This Is Where You Are today!
Your Teenage Self Was a F***ing Star
with
|Sundays, May 18 – June 15 | 3–5 PM EST | $380BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!
Bring your zits, your band camp heartbreak, and those bangs you cut yourself! This 5-week screenwriting course dives headfirst into teen nostalgia to help you create an achingly specific, wildly original high school protagonist.
Through craft lessons, iconic teen genre study (from John Hughes to what's missing), and two 1:1 meetings with Lauren, you'll develop a bold TV or film concept rooted in cringe, catharsis, and creative freedom.
Essays
My Internet Walkie-Talkie Writing Buddy Is, In Fact, A Real Person by Sarah Ann Noel & Suzy Krause
Published: April 2
The first time someone reads your novel in its entirety is when it becomes a Real Book.
The Best Songs Are Not Always The Best Lovers by Genevieve Plunkett
Published: April 16
I figured out how to have an affair without cheating in 2013.
Mother, Mortality, and Mourning by Debabrata Sahoo
Published: April 23
You know what’s kind of boring? Writing all the time. You know what’s not boring? Starting drama for no reason.
Author Interviews
In April, we published interviews with:
Mia Arias Tsang
Natalia Theodoridou
Shubha Sunder
Marie-Helene Bertino
CD Eskilson
and Shelby Hinte! \
Hi! I submitted fiction back in December...how long does a response usually take? Thanks :) I <3 Write or Die, so I am just really excited.