Editor Interview: The Lit Nerds

Hopeful literature.

The Offing, Monkeybicycle, Maudlin House, HAD, Flash Fiction Online, Barrelhouse

We value unique voices, voices that don't sound like anything else already out there. We consider genre fiction and literary fiction equally, as long as it's well-written. And we always prioritize hope in the work we publish. The world is depressing enough; we want literature that shines a light on the good side of humanity.

All the obvious: Read the submission guidelines. Proofread your work. Use beta readers and edit. More specifically: Have a strong first line, cut unnecessary filler, and make sure your piece has a strong and coherent thread running through it and tying everything together.

A strong and unique voice that makes us stop in our tracks and then eagerly devour the rest of the piece. Details that matter and ideas that complement each other. A killer first line that has more meaning on second read. A piece that makes us feel like the author knew exactly what they were doing with every word choice.

We want submissions in the body of an email, not sent as an attachment.

We want to know you're a real human person submitting a piece written by a real human person. We want to know the genre and word count of your piece to know what to expect, but no more than that because we don't want the reading process spoiled by a reductive summary. Anything else is gravy. Impressive publication credits might make us look twice, but we'll always judge a piece on its own merit. Just mentioning "I've been published a hundred times" isn't going to do much for us.

Every piece is read to the end by at least one of our editors, usually all of them. The only exceptions are pieces that are very obviously not what we publish.

Authors always get final say over any edits we propose, though if an author refuses to correct all typos and mistakes, we won't publish them. (Thankfully this has never happened.) Our edits are primarily proofreading with minor line edits if needed. If more substantial edits are required, we'll ask for a rewrite and resubmit.