Editor Interview: Temple in a City

Alive, maybe kicking

So many! Bull (MrBull), Anti-heroin chic, I love their heart and guts. ANMLY. Suburban Witchcraft is shockingly gorgeous and freeing. Does it have pockets for its wide open attitude. Milk Candy as the beautiful stretch goal. Trash Can lit for its terrific writer-focused efforts. Blood + Honey is just so cool. Frazzled Lit. I could go on for a long time because we're lucky to be in a time when there are so many lit mags, from the traditionally prestigious and almost impossible to get in to those embracing all kinds of genres and ethos. So many magazines of all kinds that really care about you and your work and the world.

A great question and hard to answer because there will be similarities. But we try at Temple in a City to balance literary wow with heart. If you have a technically great story or poem but it's a little cool, a little intellectual, versus one that's maybe technically not so perfect but captures something about what it feels like to be alive (good or bad), if it's relatable in a way I think will be helpful to many others, we'll gravitate toward the latter. TiaC is meant for writers and for readers, including those who may be intimidated by the idea of lit. I'd love those readers to dive in and see it speaks to them, too. For them to see themselves, even their secret parts, in these words. And I've love writers who are immersed in the writing and lit world to dive in and remember (again) why they do this, why we all do this.
We're not hung up on genre, genres are good, lit is good. We're not afraid of joy. We need joy right now. Probably always. But we're not afraid of pain either. We love words that just make you think 'wow.'

Don't overthink it. Submitting is hard enough with the rejection rates. If you have something you love, send it our way. Maybe we'll love it too but if we don't, don't take it as a judgment on you or your work. All decisions are subjective. Please do make an attempt to look at guidelines so you don't send a type of attachment we won't open or a novella when we publish flash but also don't try to presuppose what we'll like. Half the time we don't know what that is ourselves until we see it.
We're not so much into fussy anything, or precision anything, our vibe is a little looser, a little more chaotic because inside, aren't most of us like that?
I guess I'd advise this - read your submission and ask yourself, is it hiding behind something? Is it keeping a veneer over the emotion or thread you're trying to explore? Have you coated it with distance or irony or intellectualism to the detriment of what you're trying to achieve? Have you forced it into an order that's chafing, does it long to break out a little? If so, let it loose. Dig a little deeper. Get beyond defences, even a little bit, to the raw place we all hide. If you can bear it, and if it's safe for you to do so. Because I guarantee whatever you're feeling, a million others are too and they will benefit from what you wrote.
Also don't look down on lightness and joy, or feel they're not worthy writing areas. They're worthy. It's possible things are as they are in part because we forgot to love the things that are lovable about ourselves and others.
The quotidian is as fantastical and marvellous as the, well, fantastical and marvellous. Isn't existence just fantastical and marvellous? Existence is so far-fetched. How it is even possible? Even the littlest, quietest life is a shocking implausibility. There is so much to write about, in all things.

It makes me smile or laugh out loud, not necessarily because it's funny or nice, though it may be, but because it's dazzling. There's just a joy in reading it. Even if it just broke my heart, it broke my heart delightfully because it's dazzling. Even if it punctured me with a 2x4 embedded with 90 sharp nails, I'm glad to have read it. If your submission dumps me at the side of the road wondering how I got here and no idea how I'm getting back but laughing because it's just so...great... well, that's an amazing submission.
But don't take that as standard. There are many steps on the way to ideal, and many of them will be fantastic too.

It doesn't happen too often but an attachment we don't accept or more pieces than we accept or longer than our word limit (1,000 words per piece for prose). But people have mostly been pretty good. Thanks, people!

Well, I hope they're happy and well. I assume they're cool. But I don't care about cover letters or publication credits. I don't denigrate them, they just don't sway the process. People with no publication credits or few are welcome and encouraged.
Meaning please add them if you'd like to. All I care about is you're not AI. Other than that, you be you. You're fine with me.

All the way to the end, every time. Sometimes you can tell you love something in the first few lines but it kind of dribbles away by the end, other times it starts maybe not as strong but by the end you're enraptured. All the way through more than once. I'm always open to being surprised.

There can be an 'is this helpful' criteria. Helpful to the world, to the writer, to the reader. That's an extremely subjective filter but if I think it's helpful in any of a host of ways (illumination, understanding, solace, empathy, warning and many more), it has a greater chance of being accepted. Human creativity is important for a healthy, just society, I take it stupidly seriously. I should take it less seriously. Anyone know how to do take it less seriously?

I really want to paint some fun, wild image in this question but I guess it's really part field archaeologist, part grunt work. It's meticulous and magic. It's work but it's joyful. Sending declines is the worst.

We generally err on trusting the writer to have said what they said. Any editing is light and writers can ask for changes even after publication. Proofreading definitely happens, substantive rarely. If it required substantive changes we probably wouldn't have accepted it or asked the writer about it before acceptance. We do sometimes make suggestions that are more substantive as a condition of publishing, meaning 'if you're ok with this we'd be happy to accept the piece,' but always heavily weighted toward the writer knows their work the best.

BOTN, Pushcart, Best micro fictions and best short fictions.

Self-funded by me for as long as I am able. Everyone, always PDF your published works. Many lit mags are run without funding or substantive funding courtesy of the love of the editor/team, but it's a hard world out there. Protect yourself by ensuring you have proof your work was published.
Also, knowing this, we accept submissions of previously published pieces in magazines now defunct. We can't guarantee acceptance but we are happy to look at a piece you love and was published but the magazine no longer exists.

Social media, mostly Bluesky. We'd love to promote on more sites but unfortunately we find the policies of many social media giants to be more problematic than we can personally stomach. It would be nice if that changed.