More Withdrawals

T.J. Forrester recently withdrew his story "To The Bone."

It will appear in the inaugural issue of The Bruiser Review, which is due out this January. Visit their site and have a look around.

And Brandon Patterson withdrew his story "Kotaimbo."

It will appear in the next issue of descant.

Also, I want to apologize to those authors who have received rejections even after they withdrew their story. We're trying to be more organized around here, but I think a few still slip through the cracks. Thanks for you patience.

Spring 2008 Issue in progress

So a few updates -

Today Wade and I made the last few calls to our authors to finalize the lineup for the Spring 2008 issue. Obviously, we're still reading submissions (so do keep sending), but we're now in the process of putting together the Spring issue - submissions that haven't been responded to will now be read for the Fall 2008 issue.

I'm not sure about the poetry side of things (though I did take a peek at the special feature on visual poetry in layout mode, and it looks amazing from what I can tell), but the fiction will be a little different than what we've done in the past. Usually we've had four stories total: two medium long and two long. This time around, the Spring 2008 issue have quite the variety of pieces; I won't give names of authors just yet, but we will have a mix of some very very short fiction, some short fiction, and a couple lengthy pieces (our shortest piece is about a paragraph long and our longest piece is a worthwhile 6,200 words). This probably doesn't make sense at all - basically, it's a nice departure from the standard that we've had in the past, in my opinion. The nine (as of now) fiction contributors come from a wide range of backgrounds: for two of them, this will be their first publication/acceptance, for two more this will be their first lengthy print publication, and we're happy to say that we have a Pushcart Prize winner as well contributing fiction for the issue. It's a strong mix, I believe, of new writers and newer writers, and I really do think the fiction all comes together nicely.

There'll be more as we go on with the publication of the issue. Ethan has been hard at work on the design/layout, which will also be a nice change from last year: we're anticipating a greater attention to detail than we've had in the past, so do look out for this issue - it should look very very fine.



Now for some fiction withdrawals:

• Abby Nance's story "Calling Out" will be published in Quarterly West
• A.S. Holmes' story "The Rain in Mississippi" will be published in Many Mountains Moving
• Townsend Walker's story "Super Secrets" will be published in Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal
• Mathew Goldberg's story "Bat Mitzvah" will be published in Passages North
• Nikki Bazar's story "Orphans" will be published online at Mississippi Review

That's all for now. Congratulations to these authors on their recent withdrawal/acceptances. We're happy to hear about withdrawals, because we're authors too, and withdrawals mean acceptances. Very good, and that is all for now.

A quick announcement before I head off to get some writing done. Congratulations to the following authors:

• Rebecca Hall withdrew her story "La Maison du Fada" from us a few weeks ago. Her story will appear in the next issue of Redivider. I am jealous.
• Holly Wilson, an editor at The Southeast Review, just withdrew a story from us the beginning of this month. Her story "Whisker Get Your Gun" will appear in the next print issue of the great Opium Magazine. You can read some of Opium's latest online content here. I am also jealous.

And also, we've got less than a month until our submission period reopens, so get those revisions taken care of if you're interested in sending work our way.

That is all.

I've been going through some of our emails and found the following fiction withdrawals:

• Mary Akers' story "Pygmalion (Recast)" will appear in the next issue of The Fiddlehead, Canada's longest living literary journal. It is a quarterly published at the University of New Brunswick. Apparently, they are famous for their rejection notes.
  
• Ingrid Satelmajer's story "Ladybug" was picked up by Talking River, a journal out of Lewis-Clark State College.
  
• Michelle Nichols had her story "Visitation" accepted by the editors of The Distillery. I'm assuming she'll be joining David Hammel in that issue.

As for the mailing of our fall issue, Nat and I figured out the label situation w/r/t the contest entrants, and so we were able to stuff more than half of those envelopes and address them last Friday. These will go out soon to all of those authors who supported us by submitting to our contest.

And don't forget, Peter Orner is judging this year's Winter Fiction Contest.

Two more withdrawals to note on the fiction side of things:

• David Hammel recently withdrew a story titled "Tables" from consideration; the editors of The Distillery have picked it up for their next issue. The Distillery is a literary and creative arts journal out of Motlow State Community College in Lynchburg, TN.
  
• And according to email Bulletin #6 from the editors of Glimmertrain, Ron Savage's story "Baby Mine" will appear in a future issue. He withdrew the story from us back in May, if I remember correctly.

So congratulations to those two authors on their forthcoming publications.

Featured Withdrawals

I've noticed here at Phoebe we get quite a few withdrawals from authors who've had their stories and poems accepted elsewhere. This probably isn't rare; I expect it happens at other journals as well, but I thought it would be interesting to try to give those authors a public congratulations for their continuing success and point out where their new stories will be featured and/or printed (I feel sort of like it's a good thing to do, since we encourage simultaneous submissions after all).

So anyhow, I'll try to keep a running thing going and post these withdrawals (acceptances!) as they happen, or as we find out about them, so that you (our dear and few blog readers) can find these stories and poems, read them, and be happy.

(Our knowledge of these works will vary, depending on how far along they traveled in our review process)

Here are some that immediately come to mind:

• Amy Knox Brown sent along a wonderful story called "Why We Are The Way We Are" last year, and we wanted to print it for Fall 2007, but she withdrew it because the Beloit Fiction Journal had accepted it before we got to it. I tried to find out more at the journal's website, but there's little there to see. Here's a quick blurb I found online though. Pick up the hard copy to read her work.
• Luke Geddes recently withdrew a story from us. It was picked up by Wandering Army, an online journal. You can read it here.
• And finally, Carl Peterson withdrew a story that was picked up by DIAGRAM back in late winter.

That's all I've got, maybe we'll post some poems too.