Editor Interview: Electric Literature

5 short stories per Issue

A Public Space, One Story, Tin House, McSweeney’s, New York Tyrant, Pank, Flatmancrooked, N+1, Open City, Opium, Granta

We've been lucky to be able to publish work by some of our favorite authors, including both more established and emerging voices. Stylistically, they vary greatly, so it's difficult to give a "representative" favorite author. As an example, we've published stories by Colson Whitehead and Lydia Davis in the same issue.

We're very interested in using new media to advocate for literary content.

Read the stories we've published. You can purchase a digital issue on our website for just $4.95.

The ideal story is a story that grabs and excites us. In the words of Michael Cunningham, it's a story that makes you late for dinner.

Submit only one story at a time.

Though these sorts of things are interesting, our stories are read blind by our readers. No personal information is made available in the initial reading process. Cover letters are not necessary.

Unless they are clearly inappropriate for our publication, all our submissions are read at least twice by two readers. Readers write responses based on the whole story, and we're thankful for having such committed readers.

Stories that receive a "yes" from at least one reader are reviewed by our editorial staff.

On the day-to-day, we spend thousands of hours reading our submissions, all of us from the readers to the editors. It's really incredible to do the mental math and add up the time. Reading stories is a big chunk of our readers' and editors' process, but so are our efforts to make use of new media. We spend time tweeting (@ElectricLit), keeping up our blog, communicating with animators for our single-sentence animation series, developing our iPad and iPhone app, and working out new ideas about the future of narrative and technology.