Sherman Living, a new magazine targeted for residents of the Greater Sherman-Denison community/towns across North Texas and Southeastern Oklahoma, is looking for writers. Editor Ed Southerland is calling specifically for features and business profiles, and will pay $75-$100 for 1,000-1,250 words. See his announcement at FreelanceWriting.com and the magazine’s Web site for more information.
Normally I try to post listings about fee-free writing contests only when they offer cash prizes (or detailed information about another type of prize, like a trip to Hawaii). I’ll make an exception here for The Improper Bostonian‘s call for fiction because I’ve entered this contest myself in the past (my story, “Calendar Man,” was a finalist in 2002). Good luck to my fellow Massachusetts fictionists!
Call For Fiction
As part of our fifth annual Literary Boston issue, we invite all local authors (residing in Massachusetts) to submit a short work of fiction, no more than 3,000 words, to us by Wednesday, July 25. Entries should be original works that have never been previously published.
The winning author’s story will be published in our September 13 issue. Plus the skilled scribe will receive a slew of fun prizes.
Please send two copies of your story, including your full contact information (name, phone and e-mail address) to:
The Improper Bostonian
Attn: Fiction Contest
142 Berkeley St., 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02116Manuscripts cannot be returned.
Very intriguing article in yesterday’s New York Times. Anyone interested in self-publishing/print-on-demand should take a look. Titled “Technology Rewrites the Book: New Services Allow Print Runs of a Few, or Just One,” Peter Wayner’s article devotes most of its attention to Blurb.com, which I’m going to spend some more time getting to know.
Just yesterday (literally) I logged onto the submissions section of the Web site for A Public Space to find out what was happening with my story. (The guidelines suggest you can expect a response in six weeks, and I sent the story more than six weeks ago.)
All I found out was that the story is still “awaiting review.” But today I received the magazine’s newsletter, which included this helpful information:
Attention writers: In order to catch up on the huge amount of submissions we’ve received, we are not accepting any new submissions until September 5. So please do not submit new work via our online submissions system or regular mail until that date. If you already have submitted work and haven’t yet received a response: we are busy reading, and you will hear from us by the end of August. Your patience is appreciated.
So hold off on your submissions. And keep your fingers crossed for me!
The good news is that The American Scholar has begun to publish fiction! I saw this announcement on the cover of the Summer 2006 issue during a recent bookstore visit and quickly grabbed the journal off the magazine shelf. The two inaugural stories are by Alice Munro (who will have a new collection, The View from Castle Rock, published this fall) and David Leavitt. This is great news.
What’s not so great, at least from my perspective, is this part of the issue’s Editor’s Note:
One practical reason for not running fiction [in the past] did eventually come to mind. How would our small staff handle the onslaught of creative-writing-program-generated manuscripts sure to follow the publication of our first short story? We struggle to keep up with the unsolicited nonfiction manuscripts. A doubling or tripling of submissions might result in editorial defenestration–either these manuscripts learn to fly or we do.
The SCHOLAR has always encouraged young talent [….] Still, we have reluctantly decided to discourage the submission of unsolicited fiction. Send those stories someplace else, please. We promise to find you when your talent has blossomed.
But another bright spot–I also found in that issue a wonderful essay by an old writing friend (we met at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival almost ten years ago). So if you do pick up this issue don’t just read the fiction–be sure to spend some time with Natalie Wexler’s “The Case for Love,” too.
Seal Press plans to publish an anthology, Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out about Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness (to be edited by Diane Mapes) in spring 2007.
Single State of the Union seeks well-written essays that are revealing, rewarding, wry and that give voice to the good, bad and ugly of life as a single woman in a society that idealized–even fetishizes–marriage. This particular collection is not so much looking for stories about dating or the search for love (at least in the traditional sense) but stories of life, liberty, and our individual pursuits of happiness, whether through music, misadventure, motherhood, or all of the above. Essays from women of all ages (18-88) and all situations (single, dating, ‘living in sin,’ recently married, divorced, widowed, etc) are welcome–as long as they are on point.
Submission deadline: August 1, 2006.
For the full announcement and guidelines, click here.