December’s Table of Contents

editorial by Camille Gooderham Campbell

From the Editors

We’re back! After what we can all agree has been pretty much a disastrous year of submission system problems and sporadic publishing, we’re fully back in action.

After nine and a half years of working with custom in-house submission systems, we’ve finally gone over to Submittable, the submission platform giant that authors love, that handles submissions for places like McSweeney’s, The Atlantic, and Granta. But this lovely platform doesn’t come cheap, at around $800 USD per year — and that’s where we need your help. Submittable is honestly our only option to keep this magazine running, but to make it work, we need your patronage: a tiny monthly donation through Patreon (just a dollar, less than a coffee) will keep us going. “But why patronage and not a subscription fee, or a submission charge?” you ask. And the answer is because we want to be inclusive, and our community welcomes people of all financial circumstances — authors and readers both — even those who truly have no pennies to spare. That can only be possible if those who can afford to give do so. Our editorial team are all volunteers, so everything goes to operating costs (domain name, server hosting, and now Submittable) and paying our authors. Please help us continue to make this magazine possible.

The up side is that we’re getting comfortable with our new way of reading submissions, and the stories are flowing in; we’re truly back to publishing every day, weekends, holidays, and all, just as we’ve always done. Enjoy the stories, and thank you for sticking with us along the rough road to get here.

For Readers

We got lots of lovely Christmas stories to share with you, enough for a whole week of seasonal pieces — starting on December 19th with “S.L.E.I.G.H.” by Autumn Ives, and ultimately featuring “She’ll Be Home for Christmas” by Michael Snyder on Christmas Eve and “Candy Cane Mandy” by Melanie Bell on Christmas Day.

Though we ask every year for stories featuring other winter holidays and occasions, those submissions are often thin on the ground, and this year we got none. You can, however, check our our archives for older stories featuring Winter Solstice and Hanukkah.

For New Year’s Eve, we’ll be offering you “The Fabric of Reality” by M. Howalt.

For Writers

Thank you all for your patience with our submission system troubles, and we hope you’re enjoying the Submittable platform.

At the beginning of November, slush reader Glenn Mori was promoted to editorial assistant, and over the past month, we’ve welcomed three new slush readers, Isabella Mori, John Paul Hernandez Jr., and Emma Munro. With the number of submissions now flowing in, though, we could use one or two more slush readers — if you’re interested, check out this job description and application instructions.

The submission window for January stories is now open (please note that it closes December 27th, but sooner is better), and we’ll get February opened up shortly too.

But enough about all that. Here’s what you really want…

December’s Table of Contents

*Please note that this Table of Contents has been updated from the original; this is the correct version, and the one that went out as an email should be disregarded.