Masochistic Love

My story, “Teaching Them Happiness,” has been published over at the Conium Review‘s Online Compendium. Have a read. It is a darkly absurd story about a teacher dealing with a suicide epidemic at her school. Is there a solution? The idea for this story most likely rose out of  my recent rewatch of Heathers. A favorite of mine.

I’ve been working on a long poem about growing up in South Florida. It is divided up by place and time, written in the form of journal entries. The feelings are not all negative, which continues to surprise me. I’m not sure which journals would be interested in a particularly long poem like this, however. I’m guessing print journals may be more open to the idea. I’m aware that online journals tend toward short and snappy. One of my writing goals this year is to submit to snail-mail only journals, so I guess this will be a good way to start.

I go back and forth on whether or not I want to start my own literary journal. I love editing and discovering new writers. I have a name picked out for the magazine already, and I know what I’d look for to publish: writing that pushes boundaries in terms of genre (prose poetry, lyrical fiction, hybrids) by a very diverse group of writers. I like what DIAGRAM and Threadcount are doing especially (I really miss <kill author and PANK too…). However, it just comes down to the huge time commitment and how I’d probably want to dedicate that time to my own writing instead. But I admire this complete labor of love, what so many tireless editors of new journals are doing now, especially when you have other old Big Name journals taking advantage of writers (see: Narrative Magazine) or hearing stories about how they don’t even read through their slush pile.  I don’t understand why these journals have such an antagonistic relationship with writers. Why run a literary magazine at all? I’ve also discussed elsewhere about how I don’t like when magazines say that no response from them means a rejection. Could they at least do us the courtesy of letting us know? Even if it’s just a simple “no thanks”?  I talked to editors of a few  journals and even they agree – it takes next to no time at all to send a form rejection. Just a few button clicks. Buh-bye.

Even though I now have file saved on my computer that is a List of Journals I Will Never Submit To Again, I’d like to help. Here are some magazines that not only read their submissions very carefully, but sometimes will offer valuable feedback:

• Necessary Fiction
• Bartleby Snopes
• The Offing
• New South Journal
• One Throne Magazine
• matchbook
• Hermeneutic Chaos

Keep on keeping on, editors. You’re heroes.