Editor Interview: After Dinner Conversation

Ethics Short Fiction

Honestly, nobody does what we do. We are a genre unto ourselves. "Short stories that ask ethical questions." This is great in that we have a very unique niche, but terrible because we get so many great submissions that aren't the type of thing we publish. We tell people over and over again, we want, "The Trolley Problem" in short story form. If you go to our website, you can get a free sample magazine to better understand what we publish.

The writer's that we have published that most meet the type of story we publish, are by David Shultz and Tyler W. Kurt. However, the writer's in general that influence the publication are Ursula K. Le Guin, Kurt Vonnegut, Daniel Keyes, Chuck Palahniuk, George Orwell, David Wong, Descartes, and Aristotle. Again, the issue is, very few write ONLY in our genre, but many have a short story (or two) that fit the kind of thing we love and admire.

As far as we know, there is no one who publishes similar material. We find we are most excited about submissions from those who find the website (and listen to the podcast; https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/podcast) and craft a story geared towards the thing we do. If you have a story you previously wrote you are shopping around, it's tough to get a foot in the door. It's possible, but it's tough. Most of the people we publish have a background in philosophy, economics, technology, or political theory and just happen to also be writers.

Read our sample issue! (https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/sample) Read the Wikipedia entry for "The Trolley Problem" or "The Allegory Of The Cave." Then, ask yourself, is the thing I am submitting the kind of thing that can support a group of people talking for 30 minutes about the ethics/underlying philosophy of the choices the character is making? If that's not the case, we probably aren't a good fit for your story, even if it's the best story ever written.

Our ideal submission would be about 3,500 words, would be well written, and would have some focus in philosophy, economics, political theory, tech, theory of mind, or ethics while built around the framework of a strong character and story. The genre and age range is irrelevant. In fact, we love publishing in areas that aren't traditionally seen as areas ripe for ethics discussions. However, we are also happy to publish AI, sci-fi, and "near-future" as well, but we get a ton of those kinds of submissions already.
Here is a link from our editor talking a bit more about what we like to publish. https://youtu.be/f02mUCJua1w

Hands down, the biggest issue we get is someone has a great short story, does a genre search, then a simply copy/paste submission to us without taking the time to learn about our publication. A good chunk of what we turn down comes with an email that says, "This is a great story, we are sure someone will publish it, just not us. After reading our submission page, feel free to resubmit something that fits the type of thing we publish."
We also get things that are too long. If you are telling an ethical question story, do it in the least words possible. Nobody wants to read 10,000 words just to get to the question, "Are all forms of meat eating, except volunteering to be cannibalized, an act of non-consensual violence?"

Totally irrelevant to us. In fact, we skip over the "here is why I'm cool" section in the emails people send because we don't want it to influence our reading of the story.

The whole thing. Every time. It's the least we can do. That said, the reading usually goes in a few phases. By the end of the first paragraph we know if this person can actually write. By the end of 500-1000 words we know if they seem to be setting up an interesting problem/question. And in the last 500-1000 words we know if they actually did set up an ethical problem/question for the character in a way that gives the readers some discussion points when they finish.

None. That said, we have an internal rule that if we find more than 3 GLARING typos, we have the option to stop reading. We don't want to spend more time with your writing than you did.

As the publication has grown, my job has gone from doing everything, to making sure everything gets done, while maintaining the vision of the publication. I'm still the final person to say yes/no on if a story is accepted for publication, but almost everything else is now done by a small army of dedicated volunteers.

For the most part, we only edit typos where the author clearly meant another word. We do this without asking the author. We also change British spellings to American spellings unless being British is an integral part to the story. We never make substantive changes to a submission of any kind without first working with the author to have them accept or decline our suggestions.

Yes. Pushcart, O. Henry Award, PEN Emerging Writers Awards, and WSFA, but we are willing to add others at the request of authors.

About 75% of our funding comes from direct paid subscriptions, either via our website, or Substack. Another 20% comes from individual issue, "Best of" or "Themed" book sales on Amazon or via bookstore orders. The final 5% comes from nonprofit grants and donations.

We are active on social media, with several outlets having 30,000+ followers, we also have 100,000+ subscribers on our Substack. Finally, we offer authors we publish the opportunity to be interviewed.