Open Submission Call, Feeding Our Obsessions, Editor Recs and What We Published in April
Write or Die Magazine Updates: April 2024
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. As the Write or Die Mag team, we will share what has been inspiring us, along with craft tips and opportunities to work one-on-one with us! We also created a special space for past contributors to our magazine so they can keep us in the loop and share any writing or publication news. Keep scrolling! <3
Submit to Us!
Creative Nonfiction
We are interested in essays that focus on the writing life and especially love work where the personal intersects with the critical. We love essays that examine how publishing, reading, teaching, spirituality, sexuality, identity, obsession, labor, and family shape writing. Unconventional book reviews, insights on niche literary topics, lyric essays on craft, and stories about writing that are also about something seemingly unrelated really excite us. More than anything, we like to be surprised, so if you think you have something that speaks to writing or literature in some way, send it to us!
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.
Fiction
Our regular submission period is closed until the Fall, but you can submit to us and hear back within one week, all year round! Bonus: all fees go directly to pay our editors, who volunteer their time generously to make this magazine what it is <3
What we are looking for (notes from our editors)
Tamar is looking for character-driven stories with a strong central emotion. Don’t be afraid to break her heart. She is drawn to characters who make mistakes. She wants to read stories that make her look at life closely and see beauty in the shadows. She is looking for attention to details that are usually overlooked, and she isn’t afraid of surprises.
Suzanne is most often drawn to character-driven fiction with a focus on interiority and a penchant for highlighting the surreal elements in everyday life. She most appreciates characters who are haunted in some way—by their pasts, by the hope and uncertainty of the future, by their own conflicting desires, and by the space between what they need and the achievement of those needs. Her favorite stories don’t necessarily adhere to traditional ideas about plot structure, but rather propel themselves forward via constant micro-tensions and questions raised on the page. She is looking for stories that allow us to step into the unknown while simultaneously holding up a mirror and pushing us to go deeper within ourselves. More than anything, she’s seeking stories driven by unique and diverse narrative voices and a strong sense of style at the line level.
Have a piece but don’t know if it’s ready to submit? Our editors can help!
We believe editors should uplift a writer's unique voice, not alter it to fit their own style. Our feedback aims to ask questions and provide insights that help you refine and perfect your work. Here is what writers are saying so far:
Suzanne is an excellent editor and a reader with infrared vision. She saw things I barely knew were there, and I wrote the story! I've been through Clarion and Tin House. I'm accustomed to hearing the truth, and Suzanne, in her diplomatic way, didn't hold back. My story is much improved thanks to the work she put into it. Don't let her go! —Steven Bryan Bieler
Thank you for the BEST editorial service I've ever used.
If you know me, you know that Stephanie Danler is one of my favorite line-level writers. Her sentences swing from incredibly lush and sensory in a euphoric, all-consuming way to spare and condensed and achingly sharp.
When I felt stuck on a piece earlier this week, I reread this essay. It gave me the boost I’d hoped for and needed. After reading it, sentences started flowing into my mind without thinking. The best writing not only makes me want to write, it makes me believe I can. It’s why my first and most essential writing tip will always be to read and read widely.
Recommending dear diary, a new Substack by Lindsey Peters Berg. I’ve been loving these dispatches not only because Lindsey is my friend, but also because she’s so honest and raw in these investigations of ego and girlhood and social media and identity. I always annoyingly text her right after reading and we gab for a bit about the writing. IRL Lindsey is a therapist, so the writings are insightful in a way that’s self-reflecting and aware but also still totally readable in that they are sincere in their seeking. She has Photo Booth recordings of her college self, she pines over parasocial relationships, she revisits middle school crushes and AIM chats…what more can you want!? She’s also escaped LA and makes bone broth in Michigan. She’s a gem and her writing is pure and funny and true.
Shelby Hinte, associate editor
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel
This book was unlike anything else I’ve read before. It begins with a female friendship oriented around a decision to remain childfree and takes a harrowing turn when one woman decides she wants a child and is willing to go to great lengths in the name of becoming a mother. This slim novel is a wholly original story about female friendship, bodily autonomy, and the fluidity of maternity. It is absolutely beautiful.
Our assistant fiction editor, Suzanne, is a collector of craft tips. She will share her favorite tidbit of the month with us in each issue!
On Obsessions:
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how much my own obsessions creep into my writing again and again. Yes, thematic obsessions. Sex as transcendence. The insidious nature of domestic violence. The difficulties of associating artistic ambition with self worth. But also an array of objects, images, smells. So many of my stories and manuscripts have beer, tomatoes, leather chairs, the word umami, descriptions of dirt and soil and clay, ear lobes, coffee (and velvety cream), teeth and tongues and Belgium and muscle memory and ketamine and jazz and the French language and hockey and vast landscapes we can disappear into.
A few days ago, I rolled my eyes at myself. Get over it, I thought. But, no. These are the things that pulse and writhe when I write. The words I love to feel forming beneath my fingertips on the keyboard. They give texture and energy and life.
So. What are your obsessions? Write them out. Make a list. Then free write several sentences, paragraphs, or pages for each one. Let them flourish. Your obsessions will inform your style and your voice. Feed them.
Essays
The Problem with the Evangelical Story Structure by McKenzie Watson-Fore
Published: April 3
Testimonies follow the standard narrative arc. Psalm 40 contains each stage: conflict (mud and mire), climax (he lifted me out), and denouement or reversal of circumstances (a new song in my mouth). A testimony must include these elements and allows space for little else. Its formal rigidity precludes narrative possibilities. The testimony confines.
After I Am Raped, I Write a Book and Do Not Use the Word Rape by Kirsten Reneau
Published: April 10
Raped characters don’t live long. They are usually plot devices for a main character who hasn’t been sullied in such a way. Or sometimes they do survive, and it gets to be background fodder for why they’re so crazy. For a while I thought that was what happened to me—that being raped made me go crazy.
Writing and the Body by Christie Tate
Published: April 17
Every piece of writing I’ve ever done—essays, memoir, Instagram captions, emails, texts—has exposed me. I’ve signaled what I care about, what makes me laugh, what I remember, what I’m hung up on, what humiliates me, grieves me, disgraces me, and saves me. And I’ve written it all from my body: the thrill of that first purge in my childhood bathroom and the devastating numbness after bad sex with a man I didn’t know well or like at all. Once, I scratched my arm until it bled when I received cataclysmic news I didn’t know how to process, and six years later I turned that body memory into paragraphs on a page.
Round Letters by Anu Khosla
Published: April 24
If the tools of creativity were going to be used towards expression, then the output would be too. This is how we all, simultaneously, came to aspire to a certain kind of handwriting. The form of the individual letters we wrote were a mode of self-conjuring on the page. Because we accessed the urge for creation collectively, our aspirations were communal as well. As girls, in that era, we were intentional about expressing our sameness.
Author Interviews
Grace Loh Prasad: On Diaspora, Grief, and Writing About Living Family, and on Her Memoir ‘The Translator’s Daughter’ by Neha Bagchi
Published: April 2
I write to understand myself and to understand my place in the world.
Alex Alberto: On Self-Portrait as a Portal to Exploring Polyamory and Unconventional Love Stories by Brittany Ackerman
Published: April 9
Different relationships do allow me to embody different parts of myself. And were it not for polyamory, I seriously doubt that those different parts would have gotten as strong as they are.
Uche Okonkwo: On Choosing Your Uncertainties, the Different Stages of “Finished” and her debut story collection ‘A Kind of Madness’ by Ashley Rubell
Published: April 16
The writing has to be put on hold and I have to be fine with that because I can't do all the things all the time. It's a matter of figuring out when it's okay to stop one thing, to do another thing. Knowing that there's a reason for it.
JoAnna Novak: On Restraint-Based Writing, Setting Rules, How a Mother Should Be, and Her Novel ‘Contradiction Days’ by Kate Durbin
Published: April 18
The best writing, I think, captures some profound discomfort—with oneself or one's circumstances, with the state of the world or the limits of being human. I've found a great deal of discomfort in the body, so it seems like a good place from which to write.
Amy Lin: On Starting Where it Hurts Most, Writing About the Death of a Spouse, Creative Constraints for Revision, and Her Debut Memoir ‘Here After’ by Anushree Nande
Published: April 23
People don't hold you gently when you're writing in the fire of something; people think that they need to teach you how to handle fire.
Marissa Higgins: On Writing Authentic Sex, Banging Out Drafts, The Privilege of Being Unemployed, and Her Debut Novel ‘A Good Happy Girl’ by Kim Narby
Published: April 25
I basically just bang out writing. I try to write fast and get into the world and get it done. And I try to edit the same way.
Jeneva Rose: On How Many Red Herrings Are Too Many, Unconventional Paths to Book Publication, and Her Novel ‘Home Is Where the Bodies Are’ by Kristen A. Schmitt
Published: April 30
I realized that if I really believed in this book, I was going to have to find a different way if I wanted it out there.
We ask our past contributors to keep in touch and let us know if they have writing or publishing news after being featured in Write or Die Magazine! We are so honored to have published these writers and their work. Here is a look at what they've been celebrating since their appearance in our mag!
Jon Doughboy
Author of A Failed Writer’s Failed Attempt at a Verb List (2023) on December 27, 2023.
News: I published a bunch of stories and poems over the last two months. Here are a few: "Whereupon" in the Heavy Feather Review
"Watching Black Rain in Hiroshima" in APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL
"Two poems" in Ballast
"The Cement Mixer" in Soyos Shorts
"Their Math" in Don't Submit!
"The Shard" in Emerge Literary Journal
And I have some upcoming in March in ergot., D.F.L. Lit, the Gorko Gazette, and Bull.
Thomas Larson
Author of “A Nasty Habit” published on September 6, 2023
News: Seven publications in the past two months
"Pretending Public Space Is Private: An Essay." Times of San Diego. March 5, 2024.
"Dudes to Dads." Cover Story. San Diego Reader. February 14, 2024.
"The Writer-On-Writer Memoir." AWP Writer's Chronicle. February 1, 2024.
"Bestseller Reparations." Review of American Fiction. Quillette. January 24, 2024.
"Very Good Boys and Girls." Cover Story. San Diego Reader. January 10, 2024.
"Time During the Holidays." Commentary. Times of San Diego. January 6, 2024.
"Americosis: Riding to Nowhere--In Public." Review. The American Spectator. January 2, 2024.
Judy Galliher
Author of the essay “What Really Matters: On The Value of Writing Group” published on January 3, 2024
News: Judy recently published a flash essay in Hippocampus magazine.
thanks so much for recommending dear diary <3 love you brittany & write or die!!