Resources
From Category:
Who Pays Writers?
Who Pays Writers? is an online directory of blogs, magazines, and literary journals that pay for accepted work, with information on their current pay rates. Some entries include more information about the difficulty of breaking in to that market, how it compares to other publications in its genre, and the amount of reporting required for a pitch or article.
Until We Meet Again
By Richard Eric Johnson
Barriers in place
go no further
people cars trains
stuck in time
coiled razor wire glow
bad present
faces tense
eyes perplexed
anger multitudes frustration
shout deafened ears
cold heart finger tips
trigger-touch guns
silent wet eyes
lips blow kisses
across The Wall
Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature
The Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature at the University of Florida offers 7,000 children's books to read online or download for free, spanning the 19th century to the 1950s.
BOMB Magazine
Launched in 1981, BOMB Magazine is a NYC-based print and online journal that curates interdisciplinary conversations among artists. On their website, they publish a quarterly list of fellowships and residencies. Sign up for their e-newsletter to be notified of their open submission periods for poetry and short fiction.
A Gatekeeper’s Vigil
By Helen Leslie Sokolsky
I wander through carpets of heather and primrose
leaving behind a discordant arena
my salve is found locked in this garden
where a single flower can restore the soul
no strife present in this cloister of tranquility
as a soft breeze shakes marigold petals
forming a wreath of gold around my ankles.
Standing in a meadow of solitudes
one can absorb the peacefulness of earth
watch the landscape begin to soften
the flowers standing monastic in parallel rows
their stems posed as soothsayers, pensive, pondering.
I inhale the fragrance of this colorful mosaic
extend my palms to embrace their beauty
ready to move into a different space
gatekeeper to those forgotten fields
where clusters of white blossom into an Eden
a shepherd's purse.
From that purse pockets of solace will be gathered
and when there are enough
all the branches with an Easter promise
will be carried to the world outside.
Letter Review
Letter Review is an online lit mag with contests, publishing opportunities, and articles about the craft and business of writing. They offer a reasonably priced critique service for short fiction, and an annual poetry and fiction contest with attractive prizes. An interesting feature of their publishing advice columns is that they tell you the going rates for selling work in various genres.
Immigrant
By Gary Beck
I carry the delivery bag
and no one looks at me.
They ignore the delivery boy
and I can't tell them
I’m a man, not a boy.
I hate my boss
who talks down to me,
because I'm an immigrant.
I hate the people who tip me
as much as those who don't.
They are all the same,
despising me.
I try not to think of the old days
when I walked with Shining Path,
carried an AK-47...
No one laughed at me then.
Now I am a delivery boy
and must eat my pride.
Preventing Plagiarism: A Guide for Students and Educators
Software company Adobe's blog offers this useful overview of plagiarism: how to detect it, and how to avoid it. Questionable practices include not only verbatim copying, but summarizing or closely paraphrasing others' work without attribution.
IBPA’s Best Practices for Hybrid Publishers
In 2022 the Independent Book Publishers Association proposed these best-practices guidelines for hybrid publishers, in response to reports that indie authors were losing money on poor book design and misleading promises of royalties. Among their criteria: hybrid publishers should be selective, publish under their own imprint with a clearly defined mission and aesthetic for the press, provide distribution services, and have a track record of sales comparable to other presses in their genre.
Public Domain Poetry
Public Domain Poetry is an online archive of over 35,000 poems from classic and lesser-known authors, searchable by title, author name, or first line. Though the site design is old-fashioned and sometimes distracting with commercial pop-ups, the content is useful for researching favorite writers and discovering new ones. You can also ask it to generate 50 random poems for your browsing enjoyment.
Pencilhouse
Pencilhouse is a writers' resource site that aims to help writers at all levels improve their craft. You can submit two poems or one short prose piece per month for a free critique (enter early because submissions are capped at 35 per month). Pencilhouse also publishes Zero Readers, a process-oriented literary journal that provides extensive feedback to accepted authors and guides them through the revision process.
BookFinder
Launched in 1997, BookFinder is a website that lets you compare prices (including shipping costs) from 100,000 booksellers worldwide. A great source for used books, textbooks, or locating a particular edition of the book you want.
Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP)
The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was first launched in November 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities. Browse alphabetically or search for people, places, time periods, and themes.
How to Read to Children
In this excerpt from his book The Art of Teaching Children (Avid Reader Press), elementary teacher and education expert Phillip Done gives tips for making story hour as engaging as possible. He encourages reading aloud to children in upper grades as well, since it keeps students engaged with literature and allows them to experience what good writing feels like.
The Unsealed
The Unsealed is a free online community for people to write and exchange inspirational open letters that reveal strength and encourage compassion. Sports journalist Lauren Brill founded it to provide a space where people of all races, genders, sexual orientations and socioeconomic backgrounds can be heard and supported, while also motivating and educating others. The site offers contests, free workshops, and pen pal relationships to seek advice on personal topics.
Literature and History Podcast
Doug Metzger's ambitious podcast introduces listeners to the foundational works of Anglophone literature, explained in historical context, starting with its roots in Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman texts. The website includes songs, quizzes, and a bookstore. Read an article about the podcast at LitHub.
Whose Voice Is This?
By David Dragone
Your heart is bloodied enough
so be kind to it
mindful of its confinement—
about how it's been taken into custody
by your jailer's voice—
how its scolding sentence is born
in the room behind your eyes—
about how the mouth that whispers your doubt
is doing hard time
behind despairing windows—
your thirsty ears clapped in irons
for years in a house of scarce applause.
Maybe every cell in your body
right down to the most guarded
is looking for a skeleton key
so you can open the dungeon door
and break away from the chains
that pain you in your cage.
Maybe you'll wonder why
as you turn the lock, your captor—
the one with the ugly tongue
is staring at you from the cracked mirror
just like mine was
as I walked away and my better voice
finally reflected and asked...
Whose voice is this?
How old is it?
and was it ever true?
CTRL + WALT + DELETE
In 2022, the Poetry Center at Smith College in Northampton, MA invited students, alums, staff, faculty, and visitors to create collage and erasure poems from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Images of their creations are collected on the Poetry Center website.
Deerfield Public Library Queer Poem-a-Day
Launched in 2021, this daily podcast from the Deerfield Public Library in Illinois features a recording of a poem written and read by a contemporary LGBTQIA+ poet for each day of June. Authors include Donika Kelly, Spencer Reece, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Jenny George.
Milkweed Editions: Multiverse Literary Series
An imprint of Milkweed Editions, a well-regarded literary press, the Multiverse series publishes neurodivergent poets. Its creator, Chris Martin, says that Multiverse is "devoted to different ways of languaging" and seeks innovative literary styles that "emerge from the practices and creativity of neurodivergent, autistic, neuroqueer, mad, nonspeaking, and disabled cultures." Poets in their catalog include Hannah Emerson and Adam Wolfond. Read Brian Gresko's article about Multiverse in the July/August 2022 Poets & Writers.
Both/And: Trans & GNC Writers Tell Their Own Stories
Launched in 2022, this limited series in the online journal Electric Literature features essays by transgender and gender-nonconforming writers of color. Readers are encouraged to donate to help pay marginalized authors. Electric Lit's Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris, the first Black trans woman to helm a major magazine, says: "In a decade when the transgender community has gained unprecedented visibility in both pop culture and socio-political contexts, the publishing industry lags behind... Both/And will elevate the stories of those at the forefront of the fight for racial and transgender equality, while employing EL’s significant literary platform to uplift transgressive writing."
Chill Subs
Chill Subs is a free searchable database of submission opportunities for creative writers. Their most extensive category is literary magazines, with over 500 publications that can be filtered by selectivity, demographics (e.g. youth or LGBTQ writers), response time, and "vibe". They are also building up their listings of contests, residencies, and resources.
Thistlefoot
By GennaRose Nethercott. In this extraordinary work of Jewish magical realism, the American great-great-grandchildren of legendary Eastern European witch Baba Yaga inherit her chicken-legged hut, and find themselves tasked with laying the ghosts of the pogroms to rest. The story is undergirded by a traditionally Jewish vision of death and the afterlife, in which being remembered by your descendants is the most important form of immortality. The Yaga descendants, whose magical powers have their hidden roots in Jewish survival skills, must do battle with the personification of genocidal forces that would erase not only a marginalized people but even the memory of their existence. And there is a traveling puppet show, and a monster-hunting band of queer rock musicians, and a lesbian romance with an animated graveyard statue. What more could you ask for?
Getting Book Endorsements (Blurbs)
In this 2022 guest post on publishing expert Jane Friedman's blog, award-winning novelist Barbara Linn Probst (The Sound Between the Notes) shares tips for selecting and approaching authors to blurb your forthcoming book.
Association of University Presses Subject Area Grid
The Association of University Presses maintains this annually updated list, free to download, of member presses' special interests in particular genres and topics. If you're considering a university press for your poetry or literary prose book, this guide will help you target the right ones.
A Limited Depth of Field
By Diane Elayne Dees
My long-term memory is a collage
of shadows and dimly visible colored lights.
Atmosphere and emotion occupy
most of the space, but there is clarity
in random details.
We are sitting in your living room
in the house near the levee,
listening to saxophone music
oozing out of your ancient German speakers.
It is the cleanest, most resonant sound
I have ever heard.
We are at a dinner party
at the Columns Hotel,
and a rare New Orleans ice storm hits.
A few brave souls drive home,
but the rest of us rent a room,
stay up all night, and order endless drinks
from a woman we insist on calling Babette.
We are in the office of the weekly newspaper,
exchanging gossip, or at Tipitina's,
chatting with James Booker,
or we are at an art show
where all of the artists are our friends.
I long to remember more details,
but must be content with savoring
the ones I recall, and with knowing
that so many of my days were richer
because you were there.
DL Shirey’s Short List
Fiction writer DL Shirey curates this list of journals that publish short fiction and nonfiction, sorted by length, from publications for 50-word micros on up.
Reincarnation
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
An impossible moth,
dark eye at its center, opaque
helicopter blades buzz and blur,
a dervish I did not invite. The tiny
guest perches on a garland, twigs tied
with a raffia bow, as if it had found
a home. I see it now, blue-black hummer,
scarlet stripes, despite its size a beak
like a blade. He quivers, weak,
from flight. I wince each time he launches,
hits a wall, instead of following
light to safety. I slide open windows,
doors, so this humming thing
can find the sky. How do you benevolently
tame fright? A towel might
be a tender snare but cannot capture him
within its folds. He whips wings past
my rafters once again. Finally both
of us tire. Dead, he topples
to the floor, limp, warm, one eye
a foil bead. I carry him to my garden,
find a vibrant coffin—tiger lily I've seen
him pierce before—place him beak
first within the petals, orange throat,
last supper this final sip of nectar. He, alive
again, flits away.
His Grave
By David Kherdian
I imagine visiting my father's grave
with my cousin Chuck, who once
guided me there, maybe when I was
in my 40s, half a lifetime ago,
to realize only now the importance
of that visit back then,
speaking to the stone above him,
as I might still if I could visit him again,
realizing only now the importance of
some acts, that cannot be explained,
whose meanings lie silently within us,
wanting now just to be a little closer to him
in this way, or any other way that returns
me to his love, that I was ever too young
to understand, but that I can feel now
from wanting to return his love with my own,
joined together now in silence
with nothing for my hands to hold
that I grasp with my pencil,
that like my father, cannot grasp back.
NYC Midnight
Founded in 2002, NYC Midnight is a writers' forum that offers free writing challenges with themes and time limits to hone your skills. Each competition begins at 11:59 PM New York time, hence the title, and can range from 24 hours to 8 days to complete. Authors must use the writing prompt and submit a polished piece with a maximum word/page count by the deadline. Winners are published on the site (with their permission). Genres include flash fiction, short stories, and screenwriting. Sign up for their e-newsletter to be notified of the current challenge.
Isamu Noguchi’s “Red”
By Joseph Stanton
A tall rectitude of red travertine,
one of Noguchi's monumental zeros,
full of nothing and nothing if not full,
speaks to his Euro mentor, Brancusi,
yet, also, seems as Zen as Zen could be,
wabi as well as sabi,
a statue that resides in a West that is also East,
Honolulu to be exact,
where Japan and America
cross in more ways than one,
a sculpture offering two sides,
an ancient rune whose tune
also declares the modern,
and we can see, too, that the smooth
is backed by the rough hewn,
balances struck and striking,
primitive, yet sophisticate,
powerful, yet simplistic,
rock that is also flesh,
containing crystals that spark light,
a sun setting on a Pacific expanse—
touching upon his mother and his father
as he often did in mind,
seeking, again,
the balance that is the everything
and the nothing at all.
Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders
By Joy Ladin. Lyrically written, introspective, and mystical, this soul-searching and honest memoir explores the freedom, costs, and responsibilities of becoming your true self. Poet and English professor Joy Ladin describes how she became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish college, Yeshiva University in New York City. Through the silent suffering of growing up as the wrong gender, and the breakup of her marriage and family when she came out, Ladin drew strength from her deep connection to the enigmatic but ever-present God of the Torah, and she developed creative interpretations of Jewish tradition to make space for queer flourishing.
just femme & dandy
Launched in 2021, just femme & dandy is a biannual literature and arts journal created for and by queers on the topic of fashion. See their website for each issue's themed submission call. Editors say, "just femme & dandy embraces all the layers of hybridity that push against the tensions that pressure us to conform. Nothing is off limits. To get an idea of what we accept, think of the following, and beyond: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, illustration, drag, dance, video, film, photography, tutorials, interviews, reviews, listicles, thinkpieces, commentaries, historical investigations, and so on."
False Witnesses: On Writing About War
In this 2022 critical essay from The Point magazine, Phil Klay examines the moral and aesthetic conundrums of bearing witness to war through poetry. Klay is a fiction writer, essayist, and US Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
Writers’ HQ List of Writing Competitions and Submission Opportunities
Writers' HQ is a UK-based writers' resource site with listings for workshops, retreats, and publication opportunities. Their policy is to list only those markets that are free or financially accessible, which they define as having reasonable costs and prize-fee ratios. This page on their site features UK and US submission calls with deadlines in the next few months.
Diverse BookFinder
Diverse BookFinder is a searchable collection of children's picture books with characters who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Books can be requested from DBF by inter-library loan. DBF strives to collect all books in this category that have been released by trade publishers since 2002, in order to track publishing trends and encourage conversations about improving representation. This is not a "recommended books" archive. They accept donations of eligible self-published books, as they do not have the resources to find all qualifying books on their own. Other website features include an archive of author interviews, topical groupings (e.g. books on intercultural friendships), and articles on curating and teaching from a diverse book collection.
Figures
By Robbie Gamble
Ancient cave, cup of shade
a scoop in the canyon wall
the entrance littered with flattened
cans of Red Bull, tattery t-shirts,
a limp knapsack
silvering in the sun.
You can feel the fatigue
of those who rested here,
one more toehold
on the claw toward El Norte.
If they raised their eyes to the ceiling
they might have seen
two ochre stick figures, hand-in-hand,
looking down on them—
how many centuries,
how many passers-by,
O'odham people bearing
squash and castor beans
from Sonoran highlands
south to the Gulf of California
returning with dried fish
in labyrinthine baskets,
succession of steady feet carving paths
up and down the Mesoamerican spine.
In the cool of the evening, this generation
will reshoulder their burdens
head past the sacred mountain on the left,
northward towards the bulge of Kitts Peak
bristling with crazy gringo devices
for watching and listening to the stars,
and somewhere up there
a ship named Voyager
inscribed with a man and woman
and its path through the planets
slides further on
from home.
Pre-Screener’s Suite, 2022
By Anne Mydla
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family left their name on a document bound for an anonymously judged poetry contest in their own way." —[Author name removed]
I. This is just to say
I have removed
my name
from the document
It is a truth universally acknowledged
that a single man in possession of a good fortune
must be in the habit of taking his name off the document
You ain't nothing but a hound dog
leaving your name on the document
The owl and the pussycat went to sea
in a beautiful state of assurance that they'd taken their names off the document
Never gonna give you up
never gonna let you see my name on the document
This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You've really made the grade
being the only man living who remembered to take his name off the document
Luke
I am your father
and yet even I, a Sith Lord, never, ever neglected to take my name off the document
In the beginning
was the Word
and the Word was with God
and It was not on the Document
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
speaking words of wisdom
"Take your name off the document"
I came
I saw
I conquered my urge to leave the name on the document
Yes, I—
I set a phone alarm
a pre-scheduled email
and several booby traps
to remind myself to take my name off the document
and that
has made
me take my name off the document.
II. Haikus for the Unredacted
Or: Did You Know?
You pay my bills in
Poland—You! who left your name
on the document.
Poet, your carefree,
hedonistic formatting
pays a tidy rent
on an apartment
in a post-Soviet block,
stuccoed in pastels,
wherein I read name
after name after name and
eat my pierogies.
Midst
Midst is an online journal that showcases the creative process by publishing poems as an interactive time-lapse from first draft to the author's preferred final version. Editors hope to make poetry more accessible by demystifying the process of its creation.
Neon Door
Founded in 2021, Neon Door is an immersive online literary space that publishes poetry, fiction, essays, visual art, music, graphic narrative, and video clips. Sign up for their free e-newsletter for book recommendations, literary links, and thought-provoking columns from their editors.
Quartet Journal
Launched in 2021, Quartet Journal is an online poetry journal for women writers aged 50+. See their submissions page for their reading schedule.
I Am Still a Child
By Mahnaz Badihian
As if years and days were asleep
I'm still that little child
that loves her lacy shoes,
and her errant hair
that hardly reaches her shoulders.
As if years and days were asleep
and my hands still are
those of a child,
demanding another hand
to jump over a creek,
and my childish heart
gets confused by the
first encounter with love.
What happened to all those years,
have I lost the experience of
living in this strange world.
I'm still a child in my mother’s eyes,
who never left this house.
Come and see this child.
She has tamed the years,
and the moon engulfed
in her childish palms.
Mythcreants
Mythcreants is a comprehensive and lively collection of blog posts and podcast episodes with craft advice for fantasy and sci-fi storytelling. Topics range from worldbuilding and story structure to avoidance of oppressive tropes.
Feminist Book Club
Feminist Book Club is an online book club and resource site that builds community around reading new literature by women and nonbinary authors. There is a choice of membership tiers: buy the book of the month on your own and join the discussion; receive the book in the mail; or receive a monthly curated box with the book plus fun items from women-owned small businesses. The site also features book reviews and author interviews.
Obscura
Obscura, the literary journal of Lehman College in the Bronx, publishes poetry, fiction, artwork, and drama that reflects their community's vibrant multicultural and Latinx influences. Open to submissions from current students and alumni.
Ode to the Forty Year Patient
By Andrew Mercado (writing as Chris Smith)
They held a patient at the hospital for over forty years, yes they did!
He was committed to the hospital when he was barely more than a kid.
They held him here, excessively, for no good reasons,
Do the math; they held him here for over 160 seasons.
They held him locked up, not to go free,
Even though he was acquitted of a crime on a not guilty plea,
For year after year and day after day,
O'Lord have they made him pay.
They took away more rights and lowered the quality of food,
To the point that it is indigestible and overall rude.
He cannot sleep due to the light,
That peers into his room each and every night.
They took away hours at his patient job, so money he could not make,
All the while, the hospital just kept on the take, take, take.
For all the while, the hospital stole his life,
And replaced it with worsening continuous strife.
The hospital won't let him go, not even now,
They want to drive him for their "pound of flesh", like a horse and plow.
From the world, the hospital kept him hid,
Until they can bury him and say, "Good Rid!"
Publications That Pay Freelancers for Book Reviews and Interviews
This 2022 blog post from writer and editor Adam Morgan lists 74 journals and websites that pay freelance writers for book reviews and author interviews, with links to their instructions (if available) for how to pitch an article. (Hat tip to Erika Dreifus at The Practicing Writer for this resource.)
Sunspot Literary Journal
Founded in 2019, Sunspot Literary Journal seeks to amplify diverse multinational voices. They accept unpublished poetry, short fiction, and creative and journalistic nonfiction. There is a small fee for submissions, but the issues are free to download online. Periodic contests offer prizes around $250-$500 for micro poetry and flash prose. On the other end of the spectrum, Sunspot is willing to read literary prose pieces (stories, long-form stories, novelettes and novellas, ssays, opinions, memoir, travel, reviews) that run up to 49,000 words. Poetry can be up to 1,250 lines.
I’ll Meet You in Your Dreams
By Jessica Young, illustrated by Rafael López. This tender story, illustrated in rich, soothing colors, follows a brown-skinned mother and son as he grows up, has a child of his own, and feels her presence among the stars after she has become an ancestor.
The Little Mermaid
By Jerry Pinkney. Hans Christian Andersen's tragic fairy tale is reconceived by acclaimed author-illustrator Pinkney as an empowering fable about friendship, exploration, and the power of a girl's voice. Lush paintings in gold and blue tones, featuring Black characters, make this one of the most delightful retellings of a famous story. Definitely superior to the Disney version, or at least an essential text to have on hand when your child watches the movie.
