Writing Life — Frequently Asked Questions

Dirty realism is a term coined by editor Bill Buford in the 1983 Granta issue “Dirty Realism” to describe a generation of American writers — Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Bobbie Ann Mason, Frederick Barthelme — writing short, compressed fiction about ordinary people in economic difficulty. The prose is plain, the subjects unglamorous: supermarkets, trailer parks, failed marriages, low-wage jobs. The emotional register is one of restraint: large feelings expressed through small, precise actions. It is distinct from naturalism or social realism in its compression and its refusal of explanation. The dirty realist story does not argue. It depicts, and trusts the depiction to carry the weight.

Sudden fiction is a term for very short short stories, typically between 750 and 2,000 words. The term was popularised by the 1986 anthology Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas, which collected work by Carver, Oates, Paley, and others. It sits between flash fiction and the conventional short story in length, and shares flash fiction’s demand for compression and implication. Many writers use sudden fiction and flash fiction interchangeably; others use sudden fiction specifically for pieces that have slightly more room to develop character and situation before the turn or the closing image.

Nomadic writing is writing produced in movement — on trains, in rented rooms, in cities the writer is passing through rather than settled in. The condition creates a particular kind of attention: heightened observation of the unfamiliar, a relationship with place that is always partly departure, an emotional register shaped by impermanence. Writers associated with nomadic sensibilities include Bruce Chatwin, W.G. Sebald, Rebecca Solnit, and Ryszard Kapuściński. Tumbleweed Words publishes literary fiction and poetry written on the road — pieces where the condition of movement is not the subject but the atmosphere the prose is soaked in.

Start with journals that match your aesthetic rather than prestige alone. For compressed, minimalist work: SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Fractured Lit, Flash Fiction Online. For longer short fiction: Tin House, One Story, The Missouri Review. For international journals: The Stinging Fly (Ireland), Granta, and Litro. Always read at least three issues before submitting — you are looking for editors who respond to work like yours. Simultaneous submissions are accepted by most magazines but require immediate withdrawal if accepted elsewhere. Use the literary magazine finder to filter by genre, pay rate, and response time.

Literary magazines operate on a submissions model. Writers send unpublished work during open submission windows — typically through Submittable or by email. Editors often read blind. Acceptance rates at top journals run between 0.5% and 3%. Most magazines do not pay, or pay a token amount; a handful — The Sun, One Story, Tin House — pay professional rates. Simultaneous submissions are accepted by most magazines but require immediate withdrawal if accepted elsewhere. Response times range from weeks to over a year. Rejection is the majority experience for every working writer at every stage of their career. The work is to keep sending.

The Pushcart Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in American publishing. Founded by Bill Henderson in 1976, it honours the best short fiction, poetry, and essays published in small presses and literary magazines each year. Editors of literary journals nominate work they have published — each journal can nominate a limited number of pieces. Guest editors then select the final anthology from thousands of nominations. A Pushcart nomination alone, even without selection for the anthology, carries significant weight in the literary world and in academic creative writing contexts. The anthology is published annually and serves as a map of the best of independent American literary publishing.