A Good Online Literary Journal That Needs - And Pays For! - Unsolicited Material? No!...

December 17, 2001 5:30 AM

A Good Online Literary Journal That Needs - And Pays For! - Unsolicited Material? No!... Yes! Pif magazine, edited by Camille Renshaw, not only welcomes unsolicited texts but actually pays for the stuff it accepts. It's strictly electronic - no snail mail accepted - and has plenty of ads from other zines soliciting submissions. It also gives writers a chance to offer their services. Although the subscription to the full contents is $25 a year, there's a lot of interesting free material on its website, e.g. an interview with Rick Moody. They've raised $10000 so far and there's a pleasing, against-the-grain spirit to the whole thing! Can things perhaps not be as bad as we think? (From browsing Metafilter, thanks to a very helpful comment by Muckster in this thread.)
posted by MiguelCardoso (4 comments total)

Plus, they publish my wife's reviews. So they must be cool.

sorry - hadda get that plug in
posted by ook at 7:15 AM on December 17, 2001

That's funny, ook, because they also publish my wife's fiction. yeah, i know, but how could I resist.

So, yes, I also think Pif rocks. Now, if they only started accepting the husbands, too. Other online mags that pay for short fiction are Vestal Review, and Nerve. Fictionline also deserves another plug.
posted by muckster at 9:25 AM on December 17, 2001

(Do I have to marry one of their other writers in order to post a comment here?)

The Moody interview is interesting. I agree with his observation that most online writing that extends beyond 500 words becomes very hard to keep interest in, for me at least. But I've also wondered if the web might not be perfect for the lost art of the serial novel. Granted, it's a tremendous burden on a piece of fiction that something interesting (i.e., capable of sustaining ongoing interest in the thing as a whole) has to happen every 500 or even 1000 words, but then some of the best art comes out of challenges and constraints like that, no?
posted by mattpfeff at 9:47 AM on December 17, 2001 [1 favorite]

I agree wholeheartedly with matt and Moody about the length of web fiction. After a screen or two, I just can't be bothered. Serialized novels are a great idea. I think for the same reason, the web has seen a resurgence of short short or "flash" fiction -- stories with a max word count of 500 or so.

Some good mags publishing short shorts: Absinthe Literary Review, Barcelona Review, Drunken Boat, Eclectica, elimae, Flashquake, In Posse, La Petite Zine, Linnean Street, The Mississippi Review (self-link), Pig Iron Malt, and, again, Vestal Review.

Also, for writers looking for feedback and workshops, I highly recommend signing up for Zoetrope, a bustling online writing community. They now have a flash fiction wing. Look out for my man Eric Bosse.
posted by muckster at 10:47 AM on December 17, 2001