litfarm

Because it’s been a while since we’ve had any short fiction here. Hasn’t it? I can’t remember.

Farmer’s Almanac by Christopher James Klingbeil. (From slushpilemag.)

I haven’t been posting much since my son was born. And I didn’t read any of the Booker short list. I know, I’m fired. Anyway.

Lately I’ve been reading Joyland, an online literary journal that publishes high quality short fiction (on the internet! I know!). Here’s a recent story made up entirely of text salvaged from the purple prose spammers use to trick email filters. Clever.

Some People Swallow the Universe Like a Pill.

Carte Blanche is the literary review of the Quebec Writers’ Foundation.

carte blanche, accepts poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Send us your odes, sonnets, free verse, short stories of all types and genres, memoirs, personal essays, book reviews, literary journalism, musings on the writing process—as long as it’s well written (and within our 3500 word limit) we’ll consider it.

They also have an annual prize for an outstanding submission by a Quebec writer.

I really should have posted this sooner.

Just something I found and liked. An excerpt:

The trouble: You want Thing A but are stuck with Thing B.

Shit, you say, turning Thing B around in your hands. Look at this thing, you say. It’s as dull as a bucket of dirt. It’s not half as interesting as a sculpture of a dog pissing on a dead man’s shoe in the rain, and you don’t have one of those. You don’t have Thing A, either.

I can relate. From the now defunct Backwards City Review.

An online literary journal out of Toronto that publishes fiction, reviews and poetry (though they’re not currently interested in poetry, according to the site). The gory details on submissions:

TDR publishes four new short stories every three months (i.e., in September, December, March and June). There is no minimum or maximum length requirement.

Submissions for each issue will be received in the month prior to publication. For example, if you want your story to be considered for the September issue, send it to us in August.
Please: only one story per writer per submission period.

They pay $100 for short fiction and submissions are electronic, which is convenient. They also have a good guide for students (read: new writers) and a massive list of helpful links.