Submissions are OPEN (we're back!)

Some changes! It's good to see you!

This thing on??

Greetings from a fall hiatus! So glad to say we are back after a brief pause here at Talk Vomit. Monica (me) spent the autumn swamped with teaching and manuscript revisions, but here she is, returned and, dare I say, refreshed. And with some editorial restructuring!

Let’s get the big headline out of the way: submissions for our summer ‘26 edition are officially officially open, and you’re hearing it here, first. All of those details are on our revised submissions page, linked here.

And yes, we do have a theme, and that theme is: “it’s complicated.” Because it is, isn’t it? Here’s the description:

Our summer edition theme is “it’s complicated,” however you interpret that. You might consider: how you feel about your responsibilities, your situationship, your mother. Parenting, working, and art-making might also be fodder. Most of us spend our time living in the grey. To that end, what can’t you or your characters make up their mind about?

So, what else has changed? The secondary headline here is that we’re going to publish editions twice a year, rather than four times. What does that mean? Well, my hope is that it means two high-quality, closely-edited editions that emphasize quality above all else. Quality was always a priority, of course, but the editorial calendar was getting squeezed over the last year in a way that made some editions feel rather rushed, rather than something to finesse and fine-tune. In the early days, when Talk Vomit was smaller, I was able to work closely with writers to develop their work (as needed), but as Talk Vomit has grown (which of course I LOVE), doing that has become a lot harder! That is particularly true for the editions that come out during the teaching semester. So! We’re going to move to Summer and Winter editions for now, and try that schedule on for size. With the newsletter going in the interim, of course!

I’m open to publishing one-off pieces, particularly book reviews or serialized stories, so if that’s up your alley, don’t hesitate to reach out at our email, talk@talkvomit.com.

The bad news, I think, is that we’re pausing payments for contributors. With the hiatus and some professional/personal things going on, monetization has become financially impossible. It’s rather expensive just to keep the lights on around here, so any and all Substack paid subscriptions are going to paying for the website, including the cost of maintaining the domain and email. I really would like to grow our paid subs and begin paying writers again, but I’m going to have to feel out my bandwidth/the bandwidth of our unpaid assistants and consultants (who are mostly also our contributors and/or my writing and editing friends [hey, Zoe], who field my random scattered text messages).

So! Here we are. Happy New Year! I’ll see you in the submissions archives and also here, in your inbox and on Substack, between then.

Cheers,

M

P.S. What is everyone reading??? I’m in the middle of Middlemarch, pray for me!