About Blog Submissions

While Brevity (our flagship magazine) publishes the finest examples of flash nonfiction we can find, the Brevity Blog is the place to discuss issues related to the writing of creative nonfiction. The blog, like the magazine, reaches thousands of readers each month, with 80,000+ WordPress subscribers.

Though we don’t shy away from important issues in the writing community, the Brevity blog can also be colloquial, personal, and at times irreverent or humorous, and our most popular posts tend to be those that are the least academic.

Appropriate topics for the Blog include the craft of writing nonfiction, issues in editing and publishing, writing conference and creative writing classroom experiences, interviews with writers or editors, prompts, close reading of essays or essayists, or specific issues that challenge us as we attempt to capture true experiences on the page.

Please note:

• We receive numerous submissions dealing with rejection, motivation, and persistence, and while we are happy to consider blog essays on these aspects of a writer’s life, we are actively looking for other material and fresh approaches.
• We no longer publish book reviews, but we welcome craft-focused interviews with authors about their book/process, or author-submitted examinations of writing or publishing issues that intersect with the recently published or forthcoming book. For these submissions, please query first. When submitting, please include the book cover as well as the book author’s headshot.

We customarily schedule blog posts 30 to ninety days out, so if you are writing in reference to a particular holiday or date, please plan ahead.

Please keep your blog submissions in the 500 to 1,000 word range (our sweet spot is 850). Blog submissions should:

• Be attached as a Word document. [Please use your last name as the first word of the file name, like this: SMITH My Writing Story.doc]
• Be formatted as seen on the blog (single space, no indentation, one extra space between paragraphs).
• Include an author bio, and if applicable the interviewer’s bio, in the same Word document as your blog essay.
• Include an author headshot as a jpg attached to your email. Please send a vertical-orientation headshot.

Blog submissions can be sent to brevityblogessays (insert @ symbol) gmail.com. Response time is typically 1-4 weeks.

We are not able to pay for blog posts.

***

We also are happy to announce contests, calls for submissions, residency and conference information, but please follow these guidelines:

• We cannot rewrite your poster or flyer into a prose announcement. You must send a prose announcement, formatted and ready to publish.
• The blog’s readers are not looking for pure advertising: if you wish folks to enter your contest, submit to your magazine, or consider attending your residency or conference, give us some insight into the sorts of nonfiction your editors favor, or into the editing process, or the ways in which your organization features nonfiction, or the philosophy of your contest judges or conference faculty. In other words, our readers like to learn, rather than just being told “patronize us.”
• Perhaps someone on your staff could do a brief interview with the director, editor, past contest winner, judge?

Keep information and announcements in the 250 to 850 word range, please, and send them to brevityblogessays (insert @ symbol) gmail.com