Hello!

While Ben is on a much-needed vacation (seriously, he was getting pretty grouchy. Well, grouchier…), I’m taking over this week’s newsletter to let you know what has been going on with Write or Die this summer and what we have coming your way next!

Maintenance Mode

Write or Die has been a part of Chill Subs for over a year now. In that time, both of us have grown substantially (yay!). We realized that merging our URLs together (chillsubs.com/writeordie) worked at first, but now it’s causing its own set of problems. Write or Die needs its own domain back. Simple right?

Eh. Kinda.

Karina does the fancy stuff on the back end, like moving all of the content we posted in the last year back to our original hosting platform, setting up redirect links, and making sure all the buttons work. I, however, had the super fun task of going through every single thing posted in Write or Die Magazine from April 2023 to almost the present to make sure it was formatted and attributed to the correct writer.

Friends, we published about 300 essays, interviews, blogs, fiction stories, and features in that time frame. I think my mouse almost broke from all the clicking.

But it's done, and we are aiming to showcase a beautifully updated and organized website in September!

Workshop and events

We took it easy this summer because most people don’t want to be in a Zoom workshop when the sun is shining, and there’s frolicking in the grass to be done. But that left plenty of time to create a really amazing lineup for Fall. We’ve got classes on being a better editor, how to structure your novel (this is a free one!), how to write a subversive Rom-Com and how to market your small press book. And if you are looking to be a little more playful this September, we have a class on how Taylor Swift can help you write better fiction, how to write an essay in two hours, as well as how to create queer narratives beyond surface-level content (think your work is “unmarketable?” fuck that!)

There are plenty more in the works that will be added to the calendar throughout the month, but in the meantime, check out what we’ve got going on in October, too.

We also have a number of free events coming up! Bring your questions, and come hang with us!

• August 19 | Author Marketing FUNdamentals Craft Chat: Patience, Passion, and Perseverance with Abigail Oswald and Gage Saylor of Split/Lip Press

• August 28 | ANYONE CAN WRITE A SCREENPLAY!: 10 Tips & Tricks for Finding Your Screenwriting Mojo with Lauren Veloski

• September 10 Workshop | 12 Questions to Structure Your Novel with Anna Dorn

• September 16 | Catching Up with 

The Magazine

We published a lot of really amazing pieces in the last few months. And yes, as the editor-in-chief, maybe I’m biased. But one of my favorite parts of this job is that I get to be blown away by writers and their skills and their voices, like literally every day. Running this magazine is a dream!!

Here are some of my favorite pieces we have published so far this summer:

Fiction: Lohmelle by Charlotte Guest

Essays: Making Friends With My Nemesis by Elizabeth Austin

The Cheese Plate by Jake Maynard

Features: A Week in New York City as a Debut Author on Book Tour—Writer Diary by Yasmin Zaher

Interviews: Barrie Miskin: On Mothering, Breaking the Stigma of Mental Illness, Starting a Book at 43, and Her Debut Memoir ‘Hell Gate Bridge’ by Brittany Ackerman

And! we just announced our very first themed call! Submissions are open for the inaugural issue Write or Die Magazine slated to release this October with the theme, Private Terrors.

This issue, guest edited by Richard Scott Larson, will consist of four creative nonfiction pieces exploring horror as personal reflection. Unmask your fears and pleasure, and haunt us with your private terrors!

Submit to us

To hear more about what’s going on over at Write or Die, be sure to check out our newsletter, where we post monthly updates from our editorial team! Right now, we offer special author interviews, team recommendations and craft tips —as well as humor and charm! New things are coming here, too.

Stay tuned.

<3

Kailey

Classifieds

Here, we share a maximum of five things from advertisers each week. If you’d like to purchase one of those slots, you can do that here.

• Win $3,500 for a poem in the 22nd annual Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Accepts published and unpublished work. Final judge: Michal ‘MJ’ Jones. Fee: $22 for 1-3 poems. (LINK)

• Getting your story or essay published in a literary journal is #@%$!*& hard. We can help. (LINK)

  ---

  Chill Subs Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

  
  

We did it! We made a friend! Wow, look at us. It went like this. We contacted Medium and said, “Hey, wouldn’t this be cool?” And they said, “Yes, that would be cool.”

And we were like…blam:

And they were like, “Woah, cool.”

That’s how businesses talk to each other. In case you didn’t know.

This is the first step in expanding our database to provide writers with all of their options when looking for a home for their work.

If you don't know Medium, it's a cool platform, and they are doing loads more these days to promote writers and editors and get them paid.

We have synced with Medium’s approved listings to show what publications are open/closed and where you can find more info about them. Through our new Browse, you can:

• Discover only those open for submissions - Save the headache of going through each guidelines page to check if a pub is open for submissions. We've done it for you. Just check the box.

• Search by Keyword—To start, we've set this to comb through each publication for any 3-5 keywords you enter into our search.

• Filter by categories and tags — start with parent categories based on Medium's most popular tags, then get even more niche with an additional layer of tags we've gathered ourselves.

• Sort by number of followers — Find the most popular spot for your work or the sweet spot with a growing publication.

• Add your own or a missing favorite — Don't see your favorite publication? Do you have your own to share with our users? We have a simple pop-up form where you can add all the details.

• Or scroll...and scroll... — Yeah, there are over 330 accepting submissions, 306 of which are open for submissions right now, so what are you waiting for?

If you've ever written on Medium, you probably know the frustrations of finding where/how to submit. Several of us have, and so we decided to do something about it. We hope you like it.

Check it out here: https://www.chillsubs.com/browse/medium

This is the first of a series of databases we have planned. Got something you’d love to see? Let us know.

Today, we want to share progress on our Forever Workshop project. It's an off-site project through Substack where we are creating quality, affordable education for writers. And it's now in the Top 10 Substacks for Education! Wooo.

It's a newsletter/workshop hybrid with new instructors every month, teaching a minimum of 8 lessons each. And guess what? We've filled out our 2024 calendar! Here's what's coming up.

Upcoming! (Live during the months they're taught) 

• Creating Beautiful Prose Poems from Everyday Madness with Karan Kapoor (AUG)

• How to Launch a Writing Career and Build a Literary Life with Steve Chang (SEP)

• Writing Horror That Does More Than Just Scare with Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya (OCT)

• Establish the Fundamentals of Your Novel (And Start Drafting) with Amy Shearn (NOV)

• From Fantasies to Futures, Lessons Every Writer Can Learn From Speculative Fiction with Grace P. Fong (DEC)

Completed! (Available as self-paced courses)

• Sorry For The Inconvenience: A Submitter's Guide to Lit Mags with Benjamin Davis

• Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career with Courtney Kocak

• Perfect Your Personal Essays with Andrea A. Firth

• Smash Your Flash - The Craft of Short (Short) Fiction with Jo Gatford

• How to Write and Publish Short Humor with Alex Baia

• Writing Love & Sex Poems That Will Actually Get Published with Shannan Mann

This is a separate membership to our website, but it helps us keep the website free. It's $10 per month or $100 per year.

Sign up here: www.theforeverworkshop.com

Thank you! Some cool website updates coming next week.

-CS

Hey! For those who don't know, we've had this super-secret (i.e. very 2G) membership for a while called Submitter's Club. Members send us their work every month. We read it, research lit mags, and send you 10 vetted recommendations.

We used to do this with spreadsheets and lots of copy pasting. But Karina has built us a whole new portal! Now, members can easily click, fill out their preferences, and get notified of the results all from a convenient window. Lists come beautifully designed and presented with reasons for each recommendation and a spreadsheet download.

With these new methods, we're able to increase this membership to 100 people. So, first come, first serve. It is $40/m or $400/y and comes with full access to our Sub Club, Forever Workshop, and Chill Subs Premium Tools.

You can find all of the details and explore our new portal here:

https://www.chillsubs.com/submitters-club

(Doesn’t work on mobile so if you’re on the go, wait till you get home.)

Thank you for your time! We've got so many cool announcements upcoming so stay tuned.

- C.S.

Ok, maybe not. The indie lit world is like…way more intense than you’d think.

Also is there a thing with writers and pigeons? I mean, Pigeon Review, Pigeon Pages, Poeming Pigeon? Not complaining here, just, you know….kinda weird. And we’re here for it.

OK, so I didn’t share any of our sweet-sweet content last week so let’s bang it out:

In Sub Club:

• Where to submit this week (07.01.24)

• 20 Literary Agents Seeking Romance Fiction

• 9 Agents Looking For Sci-Fi/Fantasy

• The 48 Best American Fiction Lit Mags

• 11 Indie Presses That Want To Watch You Crawl Out of a Rhino's Butthole

→ We also have a very limited time deal for sub club with only 20 slots left: 20% off + a personalized submissions list

In The Forever Workshop:

This month’s workshop: Hot and Heavy: Writing Love & Sex Poems That Will Actually Get Published and Have Readers Begging for More with Shannan Mann

• Class # 1: Crushing Hard: The sexy history of love in poetry & how to develop your personal style.

• Class # 2: First Love: Finding your poetry "era" and how to write timeless love poems

In Write or Die

• Kailey is looking forward to Write or Die's first workshop of July! Back by popular demand (I mean, look at the reviews!), learn how to master copyediting and land freelance jobs with Jordan Koluch's class Editing for Style: A Hands-On Lesson in Copyediting starting on Wednesday, July 10th.

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Classifieds

We’ve decided to open up a little classifieds in this newsletter where we share a max of five things each week from advertisers. If you’d like to purchase one of those slots, you can do that here.

1. Funding NOW: Bitcherton is an improvised comedy podcast inspired by the stories of Jane Austen that tells the tale of a wealthy family’s secrets, scandals... and shenanigans featuring an all-star cast of your favorite comedians. (LINK)

2. The Sun illuminates human connection through personal writing and black-and-white photography. Request a free print issue of our independent, ad-free magazine and we'll include a month of online access—including 50 years of archives. (LINK)

3. Chestnut Review’s 2025 Mexico Retreat is open for registration! Join us in sunny Merida on the Yucatan Penninsula for a week of community, writing, workshops, and replenishment of the soul. January 12-18, 2025. (LINK)

4. Astrology & Poetry: The Art of Metaphor – 2 hours via Zoom (Sat, Aug 17 @ 12 pm EST / 9 am PST / 11 am CST / 5 pm BST) - Explore metaphors in the zodiac: why are we drawn to mirrors, animals, water, forests, moons, stories, creatures, and mythologies? Two generative exercises and recordings included. (LINK)

Want to share something in our classifieds?

→ Fill out this form ←

Some folks have asked us for pointers on how to develop an indie business. Like, how did you do it? They’ll say. And, hey, it’s easy.

Five of us worked for two years without pay and now seven of us make below minimum wage with no healthcare or (ha-ha-ha) retirement plans. Oh, we’re not complaining. We love running Chill Subs…in a manic sort of way. It’s just too cool to ignore so instead we ignore our overall well being.

Since we don’t have any major updates this week, I thought I’d share the various ailments we’ve accumulated as a team (with everyone’s permission, of course). Since we are remote, we all work all day on our computers, and if God and evolution only agree on one thing it’s that human beings were not meant to live their life sitting at a computer.

• This week, Karina got so wrapped up in her work she forgot to go to her latest dentist appointment to fix her cavities.

• Marcin has developed jaw problems so in meetings he uses a massage roller on his face.

• Ben has also developed jaw problems (Temporomandibular Disorder) that are so severe he can’t sleep and has to use a dumb ice-pack collar multiple times a day.

• Kailey has lower back troubles from sitting too much at the computer.

• Nikita has such bad lower back problems his back grew a second back as an abscess he had to get removed (not fun).

• Shelby’s hips are messed up from standing at her desk all wrong so they’ve shifted too far forward.

• Shannan is fine. She’s a mom so I think that gives her extra physical and emotional superpowers.

Point is…Don’t do it! We all do yoga and stretches and running and in meetings we groan and shift and stand and sit and oof. We’re a bag of broken toys. There is a very good reason most startups have investors. But hey, you all are writers. You know the computer game. What do you do to keep healthy and not fall to pieces?

So yeah, hey, those are our final updates for June. As always, thank you for supporting us over here at Chill Subs. If you have the means to do so, you can support us financially here.

And don’t feel bad. We hit 30,000 users this week. We love what we do, just need to get some company apple watches or some shit to remind us to stand/sit, do the hokey-pokey and keep limber so we can keep at this for years and years.

Best,

CS

Hello Chill Subs..tances?1

Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?

Yo

Sorry, I am sick and Shelby sings Eminem at me to help me sleep. No, it doesn’t work. Anyway, Chill, and you know, subs.

Here we go.

• Karina is on a scalability mission to Tardis the fuck out of Chill Subs (ahem, make it bigger on the inside).

• Nikita is working on the profiles revamp and damn, but also, wow. You’re gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it (how many random references is he going to shove into one newsletter?2).

• Shannan failed her driving test but succeeding everywhere else. Looks like her plan to escape us by getting a job delivering pizzas has failed yet again. Bribe well spent.

• Marcin…is doing Marcin stuff. Code! He is doing code stuff. Making browsing smooth and nice. Big tech. Blockchain. Quantum pow….and hey, notice any bugs? If you notice bugs, please email us to let us know. Marcin loves killing bugs.

• Kailey has a fantastic new workshop coming up: Queer Imagination with Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya also her birthday is coming up…also we have the same birthday…okay so we have birthdays coming up, yay!

And yeah, you just validated my job my reading all this sweet sweet email copy, so what’s in it for you?

Well, we have some sweet and tasty new lists of opportunities in Sub Club:

Sub Club

Where to submit this week (6.17.24)

Hey, if you like this sort of thing, share it with your friends! Hey friends, if you don’t want to wait for someone to share this with you next time, subscribe here: Welcome to Sub Club’s Where to submit this week! Our weekly report is of up-to-date submission opportunities for writers…

Read more

2 years ago · 14 likes · 15 comments · Benjamin Davis and Shannan Mann

And we’re easing our way into collecting opportunities for writers who prefer to pitch their writing:

Sub Club

14 Places to Pitch Your Writing that Pay Way Better than Indie Lit

Welcome to the world of pitching article ideas and finding one-off writing gigs. It can feel like an unreliable neverending search with only the promise of a potential a reward — kind of like a lottery or spin the wheel. But! When you do get a pitch accepted or even if an editor shows interest, it can be pretty damn fun…

Read more

2 years ago · 24 likes · 1 comment · Shannan Mann

Would love to tell you that we are trying these out because we have discovered a sudden love of pitching. No, it is a cynical money grab because hey, we need money. We are growing children and everybody knows what children need to grow up big and strong.

That’s right. Money.

But we are also determined as hell to do it fairly with no spammy ads or ai or data selling or whatever other bullshit folks are on about these days. And this means, hey, we need to do things folks want to pay for. So, yeah, cool, if you want to help us out, you can become a supporter here:

Support Chill Subs

Nailed it.

Or try out a forever workshop! Alex is almost done but paid subscribers get access to our whole catalog! Like:

The Forever Workshop

Sorry For The Inconvenience: A Submitter's Guide To Lit Mags

Read more

2 years ago · 122 likes · 59 comments · Benjamin Davis

The Forever Workshop

Every Writer Needs a Newsletter: Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career

In March, Courtney Kocak taught us how to start a newsletter from scratch. If you missed it no worries, you can access every lesson we’ve ever published by subscribing for $10/mo (cancel anytime). In this workshop you will learn ↓…

Read more

2 years ago · 50 likes · 45 comments · Courtney Kocak

The Forever Workshop

Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat

Read more

2 years ago · 56 likes · 31 comments · Andrea A. Firth

The Forever Workshop

Smash Your Flash - The Craft of Short (Short) Fiction

Read more

2 years ago · 57 likes · 13 comments · Jo Gatford

Yes, that is four full workshops for $10, and more coming out every month. Hop in at any time like with Alex’s latest lessons:

The Forever Workshop

Lesson 5 - Jokes and Specifics

This is lesson 5 of 8 from Alex Baia’s Forever Workshop “Humor Writers, Get in Here!” Today we learn: 3 trustworthy ways to craft a piece full of solid jokes The specifics that make a humor piece stand out An easy upgrade to make your writing more interesting…

Read more

2 years ago · 5 likes · 4 comments · Alex Baia

The Forever Workshop

Lesson 6 - Voice

This is lesson 6 of 8 from Alex Baia’s Forever Workshop “Humor Writers, Get in Here!” Today we learn: How to discover and hone your comedic voice Which aspects of your writing determine the voice within a piece Author voice vs character or piece voice…

Read more

2 years ago · 5 likes · 12 comments · Alex Baia

You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow

This opportunity comes once in a lifetime

yo…

See you next week.

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Shit. OK, Hi all.

Now that every jackass company is implementing AI, when we need to add our profile somewhere, they’re always recommending our logo as a sandwich, or trying to tell us we are a culinary company…and just, c’mon. Knock it off. It’s mean.

If we were a sandwich company though, I want to be the lettuce. Karina would be the the tomatoes. Hm, Kailey would be the cheese? Nikita’s the meat, for sure. But like, something lean. Maybe low-sodium turkey. Shannan can be onions. Marcin would be the mayo. Shelby can be the pickle.

And all of you are the bread that holds us together! awwwww

…

…

Anyway, we’ve got some fun little tidbits to share! Nom, nom, tidbits, nom.

First up, for premium Chill Subs users we now have a saved search function on our browse, yay! It’s done through our bookmarks. Bookmark a mag by clicking the, uh, bookmark in the top right hand corner of any card. Add it to a special list you’ve created and then, ta-da! Whenever you want to return to this list, you can check “bookmarks” in the filters, and select your list.

This is just the latest of the many fun little features we’ve made for our supporters like our Keyword search, Submitter’s Passport, and Prose Formatter. More to come! If you haven’t tried it out, you can do that here. It’s variable, so give what you can afford, and if you can’t afford the minimum, let us know and we’ll help you out.

Try Chill Subs Premium

Kailey just added a new, free craft chat to Write or Die's calendar: Fever Dreams: Sexy & Surreal Short Form Writing — Craft Chat with Shannan Mann and Karan Kapoor We would love to hold these more frequently! Let us know who you would like to see next! Published authors and industry professionals —whose brain do you want to pick? Comment below

Leave a comment

In The Forever Workshop, Alex Baia continues his excellent humor course with two brand new lessons:

The Forever Workshop

Lesson 3 - Editing and Feedback

This is lesson 3 of 8 from Alex Baia’s Forever Workshop “Humor Writers, Get in Here!” Today we learn: How to be your own editor Knowing when to cut vs. keep A feedback method with scientific precision When to take feedback vs. when to go with your gut…

Read more

2 years ago · 5 likes · 37 comments · Alex Baia

and…

The 15 most common blunders that hold back your humor writing.

And in Sub Club we have added Agents Who Don’t Care Where You’ve Published Before, and this week’s round up had:

• 3 Recently Opened Submission Calls

• 17 Lit mags closing for submissions this week

• 4 Theme Calls

• 3 New Friends (new listings we’ve added to our database)

• 5 Contests That Probably Won’t Scam You

• 3 Agents Who Don’t Care Where You’ve Published Before (NEW!)

Sub Club

Where to submit this week (6.10.24)

Welcome to Sub Club’s Where to submit this week! Our weekly report is of up-to-date submission opportunities for writers. If you like this sort of thing, share it with your friends. This week, we’ve got: 3 Recently Opened Submission Calls 17 Lit mags closing for submissions this week…

Read more

2 years ago · 17 likes · 1 comment · Benjamin Davis and Shannan Mann

We also shared:

Sub Club

22 Lit Mags For People Trapped on the Toilet

Read more

2 years ago · 18 likes · 3 comments · Benjamin Davis and Bea Becker

and

Sub Club

9 Lit Mags That Published Kelly Link Before She Was Famous

Kelly Link is the freaking best. If you haven’t read her, please go out and do that right now. She writes amazing short stories and is one of the only writers today who I think has achieved bonafide “writer fame” on short stories alone. She just released her first novel after, like, twenty years of wrecking it with bomb as hell short works. She’s even won a Pulitzer. I mean, who doesn’t want a Pulitzer? No, it’s not a breed of dog. Nevermind…

Read more

2 years ago · Benjamin Davis and Bea Becker

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

…we’ll get it someday.

In the meantime, anyone out there have a few extra hours a week that would like to be involved in one or more of our projects?

In particular, we’re looking for a pair of people who would be interested in running our experimental little lit mag, Thread Lit Mag for a bit while we’re rearranging our room. And if all goes well, potentially after, with our full support and a small stipend.

If you have an interest in that project or want to get on a list to work with us in any capacity, we love meeting new folks.

Email us: Hello@chillsubs.com with a bit about you, your interests, and any relevant work experience.

In other news!

The editor of Slackjaw, Alex Baia’s month-long, 8-lesson, comedy writing workshop has begun in our Forever Workshop! It’s just $10, with the first two lessons free and live right now:

Lesson 1 - Premise & Escalation

• What a premise is and how to make a good one

• The carinal sin of comedy writing

• How to escalate and build upon an idea

• The minimum requirements of a viable humor piece

Lesson 2 - Writing From a Headline

• Why a headline is the perfect starting point for a humor piece

• How to tell if your headline is actually good

• Common headline pitfalls to avoid

• A lightly structured approach to the drafting process

For those who don’t know, the forever workshop is our crafty solution to the prohibitive cost of writing education. We have experienced instructors teach full workshops every month, nonstop, for just $10/m. And even if you can’t do that, we make sure half of every workshop is free for everyone. Check out out catalog of past and future workshops here.

Visit Forever Workshop

And we had some new lists out in Sub Club:

• Where to submit this week (06.03.2024)

• 9 University-Affiliated Indie Presses

• 100 Lit Mags Who Know How to Laugh

Visit Sub Club

And Write or Die has a huge breakdown of everything you need to know with the latest essays, interviews, workshops, and all sorts of goodies:

Write or Die Newsletter

Going Towards the Heat, How to Submit to Us, Movie/TV Recs and a Month of Author Interviews

Read more

2 years ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · Kailey Brennan DelloRusso

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Eh? LMFAO? Lil Jon?

Whatever happened to Lil Jon? or LMFAO for that matter…

Anyway. Hey! We partnered with The Submissions Grinder to boost our stats! Yay!

Since both of us are of the mindset that stats should be free so writers can be well-informed while submitting, we decided to do a swappy-poo (business term).

For those mags that have crossover between our database and theirs, you’ll have our “lifetime” stats (now more robust with an additional 500,000 submissions tracked) and The Submission Grinder’s 12-month average showing where the magazines standards are at today. For example, if you scroll down on the listing page for your favorite magazines, you’ll see something like this (unless the editors chose to hide them):

We will continue to improve our syncing over time. With all the different variations in naming, some mags haven’t synced on this first round. We hope you like it. And for editors who own their admin panel, you also have the option to add your own acceptance rates or hide these stats altogether.

Speaking of stats, we’ve started cultivating loads of different stats focused lists in our sub club newsletter like todays:

Sub Club

22 Awesome Lit Mags With 5-10% Acceptance Rates

Sometimes submitting your writing can feel like being Jack in Titanic. You’re treading water, slowly freezing to death, gasping for air, knowing THERE IS PLENTY OF SPACE ON THAT GODDAMN DOOR! But nobody invites you on. So, death. Womp…. I’m in a mood, clearly…

Read more

2 years ago · Benjamin Davis

Also, this week we had our Where To Submit This Week with:

• 3 Recently Opened Submission Calls

• 66 Lit mags closing for submissions this week

• 5 Theme Calls

• 13 New Friends (new listings we’ve added to our database)

• 5 Contests That Probably Won’t Scam You

Fun Highlights:

• 68 that are totally free to submit!

• 34 that pay for your writing

• 10+ paying $50 or more

Read that here »»

Sub Club

Where to submit this week (05.27.24)

Hey, if you like this sort of thing, share it with your friends! Hey friends, if you don’t want to wait for someone to share this with you next time, subscribe here: Welcome to Sub Club’s Where to submit this week! Our weekly report of up to date submission opportunities for writers. This week, we’ve got…

Read more

2 years ago · 21 likes · 12 comments · Benjamin Davis and Shannan Mann

And in The Forever Workshop, Jo wrapped up her flash fiction course with 3 brilliant final lessons:

The Forever Workshop

Lesson 10: Let’s Get Weird - How, Why and When to Experiment

Read more

2 years ago · 18 likes · 7 comments · Jo Gatford

The Forever Workshop

Lesson 11: A highly effective and interesting way of writing about the tough stuff.

This is lesson 11 of 12 in Jo Gatford's 'Smash Your Flash' for The Forever Workshop. Just a heads up! Today's lesson is for paid subscribers, but you can find quite a few free lessons from Jo here…

Read more

2 years ago · 11 likes · 2 comments · Jo Gatford

The Forever Workshop

Lesson 12: Key Areas to Expend Your Editing energy

This is the final lesson of Jo Gatford's 'Smash Your Flash' for The Forever Workshop and she couldn’t have done a better job. If you’d like to say something nice about Jo and give us some feedback so we can make The Forever Workshop as kick as much ass as possible, take this…

Read more

2 years ago · 8 likes · 4 comments · Jo Gatford

Next up?

The Forever Workshop

June | Humor Writers, Get In Here! How To Write And Publish Short Humor

⏳ This workshop begins on June 3rd and will run for 4 weeks. As always, half of the curriculum will be free to all subscribers, with the option upgrade at any time to access the course in full…

Read more

2 years ago · 8 likes · Chill Subs and Alex Baia

That’s all for this week!

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Hello Chill Sub..urbanites?

Sure. Not too much this week so we’ll make this update quick!

• Karina, Nikita, and Marcin are working hard to build a new home for writers. More on that in the coming weeks.

• Shelby is working with Alex Baia from Slackjaw on his upcoming Forever Workshop, “Humor Writers, Get in Here!” and Jo Gatford released three more lessons from, “Smash Your Flash! — The Craft of Short (Short) Fiction”

  • How to Break the Rules (Beautifully) → Manipulating the details of time and space to make readers say, “Oh wow, I didn’t know you could write a story like THAT!”

  • Straight Forward Story Weaving → Making intentional connections between the ideas and layers within your narrative.

  • It’s All in the Edit - How to Mine for Subtext & Streamline a Story → less is more

• Shannan & Ben have made even more lists of fun opportunities for writers because that’s…what the people want.

  • Where to submit this week (05.20.24) - openings, closings, new friends, and more

  • $200+ Payouts For All You Greedy Sellouts

  • 9 Lit Mags that Published Chen Chen Before He Was Famous

• And Write or Die has a new interview out with Julia Hannafin on Obsession, Sex, Grief, Addiction, and Their Debut Novel ‘Cascade’

And Kailey showed her face in the stories on Write or Die’s instagram! And spoke to people! We’ve been passing around the same short straw for like a year because we’re all camera shy so go be supportive on Instagram if you regularly play around in that little box of nightmares.

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Endless education for writers.

What’s this? My own horn?

Toot-toot, am I right?

Did we nail it or did we nail it? You know who else nailed it and probably doesn’t say “nailed it” a single time in any lesson? Jo Gatford. God, her flash fiction lessons are so good and so much more detailed than we rightly deserve. And most of them are free. Hot damn. (It’s OK, she doesn’t say ‘hot damn’ either)

Here’s what she’s put out so far:

• Lesson 1: The Basic Ingredients of Flash Fiction

• Lesson 2: Getting Started With a Little Light Thievery

• Lesson 3: Finding Your Flow With Two More Popular Flash Story Structures

• Lesson 4: A Neat Narrative Boundary for Framing Huge Ideas

• Lesson 5: Where to Find the Secret to Stories That Stick

• Lesson 6: This Is a Turning Point: No, Seriously—Isolating and Defining a Turning Point and Why It's So Damn Important

AND, did you know that with a paid subscription to The Forever Workshop you get access to our entire course archive? Liiike:

• Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat with Andrea Firth (8 lessons)

• Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career with Courtney Kocak (13 lessons)

• A Submitter’s Guide to Lit Mags with Benjamin Davis (11 Lessons)

Yes, way. Those are all full courses. And we have seven more coming this year, LIIIKE:

• June | Humor Writers, Get In Here! How To Write And Publish Short Humor

• July | Hot and Heavy: Writing Love & Sex Poems That Will Actually Get Published and Have Readers Begging for More

OK, I’m done, we’re done. Go visit The Forever Workshop. It’s a fun place and holy fuck the images Mariam is creating for it are out of this world.

VISIT THE FOREVER WORKSHOP

What else this week?

• Karina and Marcin are cooking up some secret sauce on the website.

• Nikita is flavoring their secret sauce (not a sex thing)

• Shannan has put out a new list in Sub Club for agents, oo lala

  • 9 Literary Agents Accepting Submissions

• And also in Sub Club, we had:

  • Where to submit this week (05.13.24)

  • Where are the African Literary Magazines?

• And hey! I wrote a new startup diary post finally:

  • How Accurate Are Acceptance Rates for Literary Magazines, Really?

That’s all!

» Chill Subs & friends

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Last week we talked a bit about our new website layout and variable membership payments. This week we want to tell you about a new free weekly report we send out in our Sub Club Newsletter.

It’s called “Where to submit this week.”

In each, we include:

• Lit mags that recently opened for submissions

• Submission calls closing this week

• New lit mags added to Chill Subs’ database

• Vetted contests that probably won’t scam you

• Theme calls across all sections.

Each comes with descriptions, genres, fee & pay info, founding dates, noteworthy tags, acceptance rates, response times, and more and more.

Basically, before Chill Subs, we used a lot of list services for opportunities and found them too limited. So we’ve created one we think is better: 100% free, weekly, with all of the information you need, relevant to the time you’re receiving it.

Our first one came out for the last week of April. You can check it out here.

And to prove we’re at least a two trick pony, here is one for the first week of May.

and our next one will be out Monday, and every Monday after that. And we’ll keep adding more and more to it (looking at you indie presses.)

So, sign up here if you haven’t already. (Don’t sign up for the paid option unless you want additional lists!)

Sign Up To Receive Weekly Opportunities

What else you need to know this week…

Jo Gatford has kicked off her amazing flash fiction course for our forever workshop. Three lessons are already out. All of them are free.

• Lesson 1: The Basic Ingredients of Flash Fiction

• Lesson 2: Getting Started With a Little Light Thievery

• Lesson 3: Finding Your Flow With Two More Popular Flash Story Structures

And in Sub Club we some paid subscriber lists:

• 9 Literary Agents Looking for Debut Authors

• The 23 Fastest Response Times (Out of 3000+ Literary Journals & Magazines)

• 9 Indie Presses That Accept Unsolicited Literary Fiction

And Write or Die has a bunch of calls for submissions!

Let’s try out a new look here. No big picture at the top. Just the news. As they say.

First, we let Nikita (our designer) do what he’s always wanted and strip our website of all the frills and unused stuff to make way for some wild new features coming this summer. Just what you need, where you can find it. Check it out.

Second!

We’ve decided to change our Premium Membership to a pay-what-you-can supporter model.

We’ll be releasing lots of extra features throughout the year. Rather than increase the price of the membership, we’re trying this. We figure, those who can will give a bit more. Those who can’t will stick at the base rate.

With that in mind, if you go to our supporter page, you can now change what you pay for access to our additional tools (monthly or yearly).

Explore all of the perks of becoming a supporter, or change the amount of your current payments by clicking the link below.

For all of our previous “tiered” members, nothing changes. All perks are grandfathered in until death do us part.

And for anyone who can’t afford it, we have no limit on our scholarship program. Money should never be a barrier to success as a creative.

Golly! So much fantastic news I don't even want to swear! Nikita will be so proud. Ready?

• We have crossed 25,000 users on Chill Subs!

• Our Sub Club newsletter is one year old!

• We've completed three full workshops in Write or Die 101

• and our Instagram will cross 20,000 subscribers soon!

Holy shi—woooow. wow. wowee.

Hey…it’s Friday. This is a company newsletter. Only so much fun can be had here.

That’s it for us. Go browse.

Better yet! Consider supporting us and getting some cool extra doodads and whoosiewhatsits.

Go Chill Subs Premium

Weekend Workshop: this Sunday

April 28 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)

Exploring Sexuality & Motherhood in Writing with

Amanda Montei

In this three-hour workshop, you will experiment with new techniques for exploring sex and motherhood in your writing.

Sexuality and maternity are subjects most of us have been taught to keep separate. In this class, we will assume that these two embodied, heightened states of being—sex and caregiving—do indeed share borders and inform one another, even though writing about sex and motherhood together may feel dangerous.

In this workshop, we’ll read short excerpts across genres and discuss what we learn from these texts about craft, ideology, identity, and form. We will then write alongside one another, responding to a number of prompts inspired by the readings.

There will be time for a brief Q&A at the end of the workshop.

Workshops starting in May

May 1 - May 22 from 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST

The Poetry Lab: Crafting and Critiquing in Community with Samuel Louis Spencer & McKinley Dirks

In this weekly workshop, we will convene to write, read, and revise our poetry.

This month-long program is designed to get poets thinking critically about each other's work in a judgment-free environment. Engage with other poets in the practice of prosody, polishing your poems until they are ready for publication (woah, alliteration!).

May 7 - May 21 from 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM EST

Editing for Style: A Hands-On Lesson in Copyediting with Jordan Koluch

A good copyedit is more than just a spell-check—it’s sensitive to author voice and intent and makes the text more accessible for the reader.

In this class, you’ll learn the basics of good copyediting and implement those basics over a number of sample texts. Students will have the opportunity to get hands-on experience in class, as well as feedback from the instructor and peers on their work. We’ll also discuss tips for how to get freelance copyediting jobs.

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

We’re right in the middle of some sweet-sweet updates at the moment so will hold you over with a list of current theme calls and new friends on Chill Subs. Before that, let’s look at what we published this week:

In Sub Club!

Sub Club

70 Lit Mags Closing for Submissions Soon

Read more

2 years ago · 19 likes · 3 comments · Benjamin Davis

Sub Club

11 Indie Presses That Will Boost Your Writing Career

If submitting to lit mags is a clunky ride through a dirt road with no end in sight then submitting full-freakin’ length manuscripts of your BOOK (oh my god, you’ve got a book!) is that same clunky ride down that same dirt road but now make it super dark and spooky with random wisps of visions floating all around you as you try to figure out why the hell you are trying to go anywhere on this path in the first place. Which is all to say, welcome to indie lit, where none of us really know what we’re doing but somehow some of us get really good results…

Read more

2 years ago · 19 likes · 1 comment · Shannan Mann

Sub Club

51 Fiction Magazines with 5-10% Acceptance Rates

In this week’s guest essay, Jordan Koluch shares tips on handling edits, the inevitability of errors in published work and also clarifies some misconceptions about being copyedited as a writer. There’s a lot to worry about in the run-up to publication: What are you going to do about marketing and publicity? How will reviewers react to your work? Will anyone even read this thing anyway? So it’s understandable that the first thing on your mind isn’t your copyedit. After all, it’s sort of buried in the process—after the developmental edit but before you see typeset pages of your book. Seeing it can come as a surprise, especially if you thought you were done with actually writing the book and now have all these edits to sift through. So here are a few things to think about once you receive your copyedit…

Read more

2 years ago · 6 likes · Kailey Brennan DelloRusso

In Write or Die 101

Write or Die 101

How to Find Your Essay's Heartbeat

Welcome to the second half of Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat with Andrea A. Firth! Here’s what we’ve covered so far. Today marks the start of the paid portion of this course. Over the next two weeks, Andrea will teach…

Read more

2 years ago · 19 likes · 20 comments · Andrea A. Firth

Write or Die 101

How to Write an Essay in Six Steps

If you’re new here, Write or Die 101 is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors. This month’s workshop, Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat, is from Andrea A. Firth! Sign up for just $10/m to receive this week's and next week’s lessons, plus full access to our catalog of workshops. You can find the…

Read more

2 years ago · 18 likes · 23 comments · Andrea A. Firth

Theme calls & New Friends!

Theme calls

Deal Jam Magazine

(Theme: Deer/Dear) An indie magazine by writers, for writers. We publish fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art from all genres! • Accepts - Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Art, Photography, Hybrid • Fee: None • Pay: None • Closing April 26 • Founded in 2023

FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction

(Theme: Disabilities) A quarterly speculative fiction magazine that features stories by and about Black people of the African Diaspora• Accepts - Fiction, Poetry, Art • Fee: None • Pay: $50 per piece / 0.08/w• Closing April 30 • Founded in 2016

Amsterdam Quarterly

(Theme: Vibrations) An online literary magazine that publishes, promotes, and comments on art and writing in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the world • Accepts - Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Art, Photography • Fee: None • Pay: None • Closing April 30 • Founded in 2011

Harbor Review

(Theme: Wondrous & Miraculous) A small online space for poetry and art. We are committed to giving diverse voices a home. New or experienced, we want to hear from you. • Accepts - Poetry, Hybrid, Review, Interview, Art • Fee: None • Pay: $10 per piece • Closing April 30 • Founded in 2018

Fruitslice

(Theme: Gay Rights & Gay Wrongs) A quarterly publication run by a team of Queer editors featuring exclusively Queer writers, artists, creators, etc. • Accepts -Hybrid • Fee: None • Pay: None • Closing April 30 • Founded in 2023

Yellow Arrow Vignette

(Theme: Amplify) Expands Yellow Arrow Publishing's mission of creating a space where writers who identify as women have a place where their voices are heard and ripple out in waves of empathy and resilience. Vignette is an online publication. • Accepts - Nonfiction, Poetry, Art • Fee: None • Pay: Yes • Closing April 30 • Founded in 2016

Last Girls Club

(Theme: Fire Season) An indie feminist horror magazine, newsletter, and podcast. All are artist-run publications and creations whose goal is to promote the female. • Accepts - Fiction, Flash Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Review • Fee: None • Pay: $10 per piece / 0.015/w• Closing May 1 • Founded in 2020

Black Warrior Review

(Theme: Boyfriend Village) Named for the river that borders the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. BWR publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art twice a year, + an annual online issue. • Accepts - Fiction, Flash Fiction, Nonfiction, Flash CNF, Poetry, Hybrid, Translation, Art, Photography, Comics, Audio, Video, Game • Fee: $3• Pay: $20-$200 • Closing May 1 • Founded in 1974

Cold Signal

(Theme: Pygmalion & Galatea) A weird genre & indie-lit online anthology series exploring the existential questions of today & tomorrow. • Accepts - Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry • Fee: None • Pay: None • Closing May 31 • Founded in 2022

New friends!

Soapberry Review

A journal for reviews of Asian American literature.• Accepts - Nonfiction, Review • Fee: None • Pay: None • Founded in 2022

The Anti-Misogyny Club

A feminist journal of art, writing and resistance • Accepts - Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Art, Photography, Audio, Video • Fee: None • Pay: None • Founded in 2024

Subliminal Surgery

Micro Poetry and other Very Short Works • Accepts - Hybrid • Fee: None • Pay: None • Founded in 2023

The Write Together Retreat featuring Elle Nash and Sophia Hembeck

Saturday, April 20 from 11:00 - 3:30 PM EST

Join us for a day of writing during our monthly virtual retreat! You will have the opportunity to write alongside other writers in real time and learn from authors in the industry.

This will be a time of encouragement and a chance to make real progress!
The retreat also includes an hour-long craft chat and Q&A session with Elle Nash and Sophia Hembeck, who will discuss how they balance both the business and creative sides of their writing life.

They will talk about how they support themselves through multiple income streams and how, using Substack, social media, Patreon, and other ways, writers can develop ways to support their art.

Register Now

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Not much on the news board this week:

• Karina is developing an online portal for our submitters club

• Marcin is implementing some super cool, super secret new design updates

• Kailey and her team are now taking submissions through submittable (traitors!)

• Shelby has been prepping to launch our next WoD101 course with Jo Gatford

• Nikita is putting the finishing touches on our Sub Club revamp

• and my legs hurt.

Latest content goodies:

Sub Club Lists:

• 17 African Literary Magazines & Journals (Free)

• 99 of the Hardest Poetry Magazines to Get Published In (Premium)

• 12 Indie Presses with Upcoming Deadlines (Free)

Latest from Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat with Andrea Firth:

• Tapping Memory and Generating Ideas for Personal Essays (Free)

• How to Build Scenes and Create Structure in Personal Essay (Free)

• Who’s Talking: Dialogue and Point of View in Personal Essay (Free)

• Beginnings, Endings and Titles (Free)

If you’d like to support the work we do at Chill Subs we have a premium membership on our website. We have no investors or advertisers so you’re support is what givess us the resources to do what we do. Thank you.

→ Click here to learn more about supporting Chill Subs (and getting some treats in return ←

Essay we published this week

After I Am Raped, I Write a Book and Do Not Use the Word Rape

By Kirsten Reneau

Editors Note: There's a tendency to avoid naming things for what they are out of politeness. Rape is a word often turned into a euphamism. In Kirsten's essay she writes about what it means to call a thing what it is.

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.

Interview of the week

Alex Alberto

On Self-Portrait as a Portal to Exploring Polyamory and Unconventional Love Stories

by Brittany Ackerman

None of us really grew up with scripts for polyamory, and integrating these parts of ourselves does feel foreign at times. Polyamory has definitely made me feel more capable of love.

Workshops Happening this Weekend!

Saturday, April 13 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)

Small Press Publishing with a Debut Seminar with Emily Jon Tobias

Looking for a publisher to call home for your manuscript? Emily Jon Tobias will share her successes and failures along the journey to find a home for her debut story collection, MONARCH. You will learn about writing query letters (agents vs. presses), tracking submissions, the research process, fees, red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive, simple tools, and, perhaps most importantly, how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection.

*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!

Sunday, April 14 from 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM (EST)

Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns with

Courtney Kocak

In this workshop, Courtney will explain the crux of popular columns for top publications. You'll do a brainstorming exercise for each, and there will be an opportunity to workshop your ideas and ask questions. You'll receive a list of potential columns and editor contact information for each. By the end, you'll have a game plan for landing your best bylines yet!

*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

April already, huh? Damn. OK. Updates. We got this.

So our major project right now is getting our monthly workshop subscriptions off the ground so we can keep chill subs going while we develop more premium features. And we have two excellent folks to thank for their help on this. First, Andrea Firth, who is teaching this month’s workshop on personal essays with four totally free lessons that just kill it. Two are out already:

Write or Die 101

Tapping Memory and Generating Ideas for Personal Essays

Read more

2 years ago · 70 likes · 32 comments · Andrea A. Firth

Write or Die 101

How to Build Scenes and Create Structure in Personal Essay

Hey writers! Let’s continue our deep dive into personal essays with Andrea A. Firth! This workshop will run for 8 lessons, and arrive straight to your inbox. See what else this workshop has in store here and support us by becoming a subscriber here…

Read more

2 years ago · 26 likes · 18 comments · Andrea A. Firth

And the second person is our artist Mariam who illustrates all of our newsletters. We know artists are getting fucked over by AI right now and we will never get on that train. Everything we do will always be human made and human paid (for better or worse). And no AI will ever be as good as Mariam. Her work has a heartbeat and we’re forever grateful for her outrageous discounts while we grow. Yeah, these are all Mariam:

I just feel like, right now, with everything going all robot AI stuff, it was important to shine some light on a very kind, insightful, and damn good artist. She has an instagram if you’d like to see what she creates when not confined to our whacky ideas.

In other news!

• We’ve got a major update coming for writers. You’re gonna love it. Karina and Marcin are working on that.

• Kailey and her team just closed up fiction submissions.

• Nikita is working on a gorgeous new browsing concept we hope to implement soon.

• and Shel is getting a little too good with these memes

And we have some new lists and essays out in sub club!

The Sub Club Newsletter

11 Lit Mags that Published Kaveh Akbar Before He Was Famous

If you’re into poetry, chances are you’ve heard of Kaveh Akbar. And now, since his novel Martyr (Knopf) came out earlier this year and skyrocketed to the New York Times bestseller list along with placing on many celebrity book club lists (Hello Natalie Portman!) – Akbar is fast on his way to becoming a household name. But Kaveh Akbar has been doing this for a long time. And he’s damn good at it. And when I say “this”, I don’t just mean writing. I mean, engaging with the literary community, reaching across popularity spheres and connecting with people from all walks of life (not just the intellectuals, for example). I have a lovely personal anecdote with Kaveh Akbar. When Karan and I first started talking, we were reading Kaveh’s debut poetry collection…

Read more

2 years ago · 25 likes · 10 comments · Benjamin Davis and Shannan Mann

The Sub Club Newsletter

21 Recently Opened Submission Calls

Read more

2 years ago · 31 likes · 13 comments · Benjamin Davis

The Sub Club Newsletter

A Letter of Recommendation for Reading (and writing) the Epistolary Novel (+6 Indie Presses Looking for New Writers)

Read more

2 years ago · Amy Shearn and Kailey Brennan DelloRusso

Essay we published this week

The Problem with the Evangelical Story Structure

By McKenzie Watson-Fore

Editors Note: “McKenzie's essay highlights the connection between testimony and traditional narrative arc. In it, she reveals the limitations of orienting stories around conflict and salvation.”

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.

Interview of the week

Grace Loh Prasad

On Diaspora, Grief, and Writing About Living Family, and on Her Memoir ‘The Translator’s Daughter’

by Neha Bagchi

But there is a difference between keeping a diary and writing a memoir. Writing is both process and input, and you can never forget that.

Free Workshop!

On May 11th, join Alex Baia, humor writer and editor of Slackjaw, for a free workshop, You Can Be Funny Now: How To Start Writing Humor!

Many people dream of writing and publishing funny stuff. Is that you? Good, because this workshop will get you writing humor FAST! Whether you're new to writing humor or you have been dabbling at it for a while, this workshop is for you.

Details here

Small Press Publishing with a Debut Seminar

Looking for a publisher to call home for your manuscript? Join Emily Jon Tobis next week (April 13th)! You will learn about:

• writing query letters (agents vs. presses),

• tracking submissions

• the research process and fees,

• red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive

• how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection.

*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

Our calendar looks so PRETTY now!

And useful!

Use it to track the reading periods, openings, closings, and more for all your favorite listings. → Check it out here. ← It’s free and open to all.

In other news, we made Rejection BINGO an optional pop-up for folks using our tracker. We received some feedback that not everyone likes gamifying their rejections. Totally understand. You can now always find it beneath your submissions on your tracker page.

In our Sub Club Newsletter, we released some new lists:

The Sub Club Newsletter

47 Lit Mags Closing for Submissions Soon

Read more

2 years ago · 26 likes · 2 comments · Benjamin Davis

The Sub Club Newsletter

11 Indie Presses Who Want Your Unsolicited Novels

Querying your novel to literary agents is the worst. Not because it’s so difficult (it is), but because when they say no, you know the exact human who is rejecting you. You know what their eyes look like. Due to the nature of employee photos, you probably know what their smile looks like, too. So you can visualize in perfect detail the unsmiling human sighing at that query letter before emailing you a template rejection…

Read more

2 years ago · 12 likes · Benjamin Davis and Shannan Mann

The Sub Club Newsletter

22 Literary Magazines with 3% Acceptance Rates

This week’s guest essay is by The Racket Reading Series and journal founder, Noah Sanders. Noah, like so many of us, is in the midst of a relentless time crunch. He writes of how the challenge to maintain a writing routine has only intensified by parenthood as he grapples with his need to adjust priorities and expectations to find solace in any moment he can find to write. Who else can relate…

Read more

2 years ago · 4 likes

And finished her course on how to grow a newsletter!

Write or Die 101

When (And If) to Start Charging for Your Newsletter

If you’re new to Write or Die 101, it is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors. This month’s workshop, Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career, is from Courtney Kocak…

Read more

2 years ago · 14 likes · 2 comments · Courtney Kocak

Write or Die 101

Subscriptions Aren't the Only Method of Newsletter Monetization

If you’re new to Write or Die 101, it is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors. This month’s workshop, Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career, is from Courtney Kocak…

Read more

2 years ago · 9 likes · Courtney Kocak

And next week we’ll have Andrea Firth teaching how to write a personal essay! First 4 lessons are free!

Write or Die 101

April Workshop Announcement! Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat

Welcome to WoD101! This Substack is designed to offer one new course to writers every month with a new instructor. It is an experiment in making educational content for writers more accessible. We hope you like it, and invite you to learn more by exploring our 2024 Calendar…

Read more

2 years ago · 33 likes · 16 comments · Andrea A. Firth

Essay

Love, Death, and Quevedo by Nora Carr

Here’s the problem with “enamored,” though: It’s a mushy word. It falls apart in your mouth when you say it. It doesn’t have the quick, even rhythm of the Spanish “enamorado,” and it doesn’t have the lightness—the lifting trill of the soft “r”—in the middle.

Interviews

Katie Jean Shinkle and Steven Dunn: On Writing a Novel Together, Challenging Dominant Narratives of Otherness With Pure Joy, and How Writing Is Informed by Place by Elle Nash

We were thinking about what we want and what we deserve. We deserve to be happy together and treat each other kindly. So the point was for nobody in that community to treat each other badly. That's how a lot of the joy and tenderness and softness came about, because of the things we don't want, that we see ourselves represented in all the time.

GRWM interview from our WOD newsletter

Write or Die Newsletter

GRWM—Write It Out with AM Ringwalt

GRWM (Get Ready With Me) is a new (and dare I say sexy!) segment where I'll be interviewing writers retro-style-- cute little questionnaires about what writers are wearing, listening to, snacking on, etc. We want to know what they're into and what gives them the ick. We want writing prompts based on their books. We want to know their favorite song, t…

Read more

2 years ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Brittany Ackerman

Free Workshop

On May 11th, join Alex Baia, humor writer and editor of Slackjaw, for a free workshop, You Can Be Funny Now: How To Start Writing Humor! Whether you're new to writing humor or you have been dabbling at it for a while, this workshop is for you. Details here

Saturday, April 13 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)

Small Press Publishing with a Debut Seminar with Emily Jon Tobias

Looking for a publisher to call home for your manuscript? Emily Jon Tobias will share her successes and failures along the journey to find a home for her debut story collection, MONARCH. You will learn about writing query letters (agents vs. presses), tracking submissions, the research process, fees, red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive, simple tools, and, perhaps most importantly, how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection.

*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!

Sunday, April 14 from 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM (EST)

Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns with

Courtney Kocak

In this workshop, Courtney will explain the crux of popular columns for top publications. You'll do a brainstorming exercise for each, and there will be an opportunity to workshop your ideas and ask questions. You'll receive a list of potential columns and editor contact information for each. By the end, you'll have a game plan for landing your best bylines yet!

*This workshop will be recorded if you can’t attend live!

None of the content in this newsletter will ever be paywalled, but if you’d like to support the work we do, you can upgrade to a paid subscription as a form of donation.

Subscribe now

We’re in the midst of a load of updates at the moment so nothing too wild going on.

• Karina is finishing up a Submitter’s Club reboot.

• Nikita is designing brand new profile pages (fuck they are so cool)

• Shel & Kailey are working on a huge revamp of all our education.

• And Ben did some content stuff:

The Sub Club Newsletter:

The Sub Club Newsletter

25 Most Competitive Literary Magazines & Journals on Chill Subs

Read more

2 years ago · 33 likes · 24 comments · Benjamin Davis

The Sub Club Newsletter

10 Canadian Magazines Recommended by Literary Agents

For our last list on lit mags agents like to read we talked to writers and editors who had direct experience with agents regarding pieces published in those journals. This time, we realized we could just go and ask agents themselves. It was one of those a-ha moments that mixed with the self-doubt of…why didn’t we think of this sooner? I know, we’re like…the smartest…

Read more

2 years ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Benjamin Davis

The Sub Club Newsletter

How Querying a Novel Can Feel Like Dating

This week, we are excited to welcome the podcast host of The Shit About Writing Team and literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, CeCe Lyra. In her essay, CeCe explains how querying agents for representation can feel very similar to the world of dating while offering some tips on how to make the process a little less daunting…

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2 years ago · 16 likes · 6 comments · CeCe Lyra

And in Write or Die 101, Courtney has some fantastic new lessons on how to grow and launch your newsletter:

Write or Die 101

How to Grow Your Newsletter: Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration

If you’re new to Write or Die 101, it is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors. This month’s workshop, Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career, is from Courtney Kocak…

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2 years ago · 12 likes · 2 comments · Courtney Kocak

Write or Die 101

How to Launch Your Newsletter

If you’re new to Write or Die 101, it is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors. This month’s workshop, Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career, is from Courtney Kocak…

Read more

2 years ago · 16 likes · 12 comments · Courtney Kocak

Write or Die 101

How to Optimize Your Welcome Email To Create Loyal Subscribers

Welcome to the second half of Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career with Courtney Kocak. Here’s what we’ve covered so far: All free to read for all! Today marks the start of the paid portion of this course. Courtney will be teaching…

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2 years ago · 16 likes · 2 comments · Courtney Kocak

Essay

So, I Lied: The Chapbook as a Coherent Container by Adrie Rose

I wanted to tell the stories of what had happened to me, not because they were my special stories, but because they were not that special, actually.

Interview

Sean Enfield: On Not Caring if You’re Relevant, Turning Your Interests Into Art, Teacher Troubles, and His Debut Essay Collection ‘Holy American Burnout!’ by Shelby Hinte

I feel for teachers working in this current environment where there's so many eyes on what they say and do in the classroom. I think it's valid for those students to come to teachers with those questions. I think it's valid for teachers to be honest and open, but I certainly would be nervous to do so if you're teaching in Florida or Texas or in the American South.

Saturday, April 13 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM (EST)

Small Press Publishing with a Debut Seminar with Emily Jon Tobias

Looking for a publisher to call home for your manuscript? Emily Jon Tobias will share her successes and failures along the journey to find a home for her debut story collection, MONARCH. You will learn about writing query letters (agents vs. presses), tracking submissions, the research process, fees, red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive, simple tools, and, perhaps most importantly, how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection.

Sunday, April 14 from 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM (EST)

Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns with

Courtney Kocak

In this workshop, Courtney will explain the crux of popular columns for top publications. You'll do a brainstorming exercise for each, and there will be an opportunity to workshop your ideas and ask questions. You'll receive a list of potential columns and editor contact information for each. By the end, you'll have a game plan for landing your best bylines yet!

April 20th & April 27th from 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Chasing the Chantable: A Two Week Intensive on Sonic Impact in Syntax with Ben Jahn

In this half-class/half-workshop, we'll study the sentence as a site of sound aesthetics and practice techniques to increase our syntax's sonic impact.

This class is for folks who hear “kill your darlings,” and think: but they’re all darlings! For people who see the sentence as its own aesthetic terrain, with tension and energy and momentum within and between each syllabic synapse. We’ll read and discuss the work of writers who do this—who write with and make us read with a tuned ear. Then we’ll practice the techniques in a workshop format.

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