July 2, 2007
Dear Glimmer Train Readers and Writers,
In this issue:
- Upcoming deadlines and results announcements.
Summer Fiction Open closes July 15, Summer Very Short Fiction competition closes July 31. Standard submission category is now open, too.
- An essay by New Orleanian writer, carpenter,
and editor, E.B. Johnson.
- Questions for (and answers from!) the editors.
- Writer, educator, and activist Sunshine O’Donnell talks about bringing her new novel, Open Me, to life.
- Not-quite-new survey. (The survey people accidentally closed our survey when they were updating their site. May we try again, please? We really DO want to know what features you like!)
- List of latest pieces accepted for publication in Glimmer Train Stories.
Upcoming deadlines and results:
- Summer Fiction Open closes July 15!
- Summer Very Short Fiction closes July 31.
- Standard category is open. (By the way, sometimes people don’t get their emails confirming that we’ve received their submissions because their email servers are so—legitimately!—anxious to save their customers from spam and bugs. Remember: you can always check status on a piece by logging in and clicking on “My Submissions.”)
- We’ve just wrapped up the judging of this spring’s Short Story Award for New Writers. The winners have been notified and the Top-25 list is published. Thank you so much to those who sent their stories—this was a great batch!
Congratulations to the winners:
1st place: “Killer Heart” by E.B. Johnson
2nd place: “This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories” by Johanna Skibsrud
3rd place: “I-90” by Valli Jo Porter - We’re having a fantastic time reading Family Matters stories now, too. Those results will be posted at www.glimmertrain.org on September 1.
A few questions for (and answers from) the editors:
Q. What size font do you like work to be in?
A. Our ideal would be 12 point and – as long as we’re talking ideal – a nice, plain font like Times New Roman is always our first choice, and double-spaced is great. We’re flexible, though.
Q. How strictly do we need to adhere to the word count limitations for the various categories? I have a 22,000 word story that I’d like to submit for the Fiction Open.
A. The only category for which there is a firm and precise upper limit is the Very Short Fiction Award, since the word count limitation is the key element in the category’s definition. The other categories we can slide around a little this way and that.
Q. If a story passes the first read and moves on to further consideration, do you print it out for that or is all reading done onscreen?
A. Excellent question. First and second reads are done online. When a story moves beyond that point, we print it out and from then on it is handled as hard copy.
We've recently accepted these stories for publication in Glimmer Train Stories (note):
- “Enough Dead Squirrel” by Eileen Fitzgerald
- “Just Enough Food to Remember” by Miriam Novogrodsky
- “Coincidence” by David Borofka
- “Baby Mine” by Ron Savage
- “Something Something” by Ann Beattie
- “Diplomats” by Will Boast
- “Proximity” by Diana Spechler
That’s it for our July bulletin!
Looking forward,
Co-editors and sisters
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