Erika Dreifus

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.

I’m sad about this. A few days ago I received a letter from Daniel Caplice Lynch, editor-in-chief of New York Stories. Over the past few years I’ve submitted several stories to this literary magazine, and I’ve frequently received kind and encouraging responses.

Unfortunately, my work never made it into the magazine’s pages. In this latest note I learned that New York Stories is at the end of its run with the summer issue (although this information does not yet seem to be on the Web site). It will be missed.