For those of you who don’t use Duotrope, we here at Conte are big fans since it truly is the best online resource for writers. One of their latest features allows editors to share their thoughts about the submissions process, and we’re pleased to announce that you can now read what we had to say in a recent interview.
We hope spring has found you, wherever you are. We wanted to remind all potential submitters that the deadline for our summer issue is June 1st. Also, if you have already submitted work for Conte 6.1, you can expect to hear from us in the coming weeks. Feel free to query us if you submitted this winter (December-February) and have yet to receive a decision, as we’re doing our best to respond within 8-12 weeks.
April is National Poetry Month, so in the immortal words of Walt Whitman, all of us here at Conte would like to sound our barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world! For those of you on the Delmarva Peninsula, I’d like to share two upcoming readings at Wor-Wic Community College that are part of our month-long celebration:
Both events are free and open to the public; just click either link above for the college’s official press release and more information. If you’re in the area, we’ll hope to see you there!
It is with great excitement that we announce the addition of Ashley Seitz Kramer to our rowdy staff as a Contributing Poetry Editor for Conte 6.1, our upcoming summer issue. You can read more about Ashley and her work in our Who Is Conte? section.
We’re pleased to announce that our friend and recent contributor Erika Meitner is this week’s featured poet at Anti-.
With Conte 5.2 hot off the presses, I wanted to share yet another treat: Poets’ Quarterly just published my recent interview with William Hathaway, a friend and former Conte contributor. Enjoy!
reaching up ever so casually to sliiiide back that release date. We’ll go live with our twelfth issue on January 31st.
Twelfth. That was just more difficult to type than is really warranted, I think. Not really a very useful word. A little hung up on itself if you ask me, and a very unflattering intestinal scramble of consonants at the end there. I guess some utility for discussing eggs or overtime, although truthfully, not that much! Yeah, but what has twelfth ever done, maliciously, to you, you say. Damn. I didn’t mean for this paragraph to become so accusatory. Now you made feel a little bit like an asshole for bringing it up.
To all our readers, contributors, and friends, we here at Conte wish you a Happy New Year!
We are currently completing issue 5.2 slated for publication late January (it’s our twelfth!), so if you’ve submitted work for this issue, you can expect to hear from us presently.
Happy Hanukkah. That comes about 3 days late. I said it to you before I said it to my grandparents. That’s how horrible I am. Are you serious? It’s like December…it’s pretty much about to almost be January.
Well, you guys, I feel like a seagull because of my inbox. See, my inbox has a folder that all the (properly addressed) submissions go into due to computer magic. See, seagulls, if you have never lived in or near a temperate coastal area, are like semi-vicious winged rats that congregate anywhere they can find a place where sea and land meet, and hold languid symposiums about how to spread poop. One thing you can do with them - one thing I’ve never done with them, but it’s commonly believed by slightly angry people who sometimes need a mental image to vent with such as myself that you can do with seagulls - is feed them alka-seltzer. Like rats, they eat anything they can stuff in their greedy little avian gullets (for the purpose of making poop), such as plastic rings from six-packs (that’s tragic), or fizzy white medicinal tablets (if you’re a sick bastard unlike me, I’m just bad to old people). When they eat alka-seltzer, it reacts with their inherently disagreeable seagull nature, and they explode. I don’t want you to hurt any seagulls, but I do want you to understand that my inbox is exploding. On behalf of all seagulls I say thank you, and give me a couple days, I really am getting back to you very soon. I also want you to be nice to your grandparents.
In the meantime, I’m making up for not having shared more lately by sharing something very good. I love short fiction - short short fiction, preferably when it’s funny but also sort of tragically insightful, as long as it makes me laugh. Some people call it flash fiction. I generally don’t care for that name because it makes it sound like the author just wrote something very quick and shot it off. If you’re a genius, this is a great way to write, and you should send me your so-called ‘flash fiction’ - otherwise this is a very terrible method for doing anything, and please don’t send it to me by the way. How do you know if you’re a genius? Are you better than Bob Powers? Bob Powers writes probably the best short stuff I’ve read on the interwebs. Some time ago his Girls Are Pretty blog came back. Nobody told me. Man you cannot imagine how angry I am about that. It puts me way above the level of slightly angry that I claimed in the last paragraph. But if you don’t know about GAP, then you can go here and be told what to do.
The reason I even checked up on Mr. Powers was because someone linked me to this other great thing, Tom Oatmeal. If you write this well without even looking, then please do send something to us. Actually if you have to look that’s OK too. If you don’t write that well (either with or without looking), then you can join my club. It’s called the Not Geniuses, Not Hilarious, but We Read GAP-and-TO club. Joining is hard at the moment, but there might be stickers later.
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