a summer "break," submissions re-opening soon, plus a "25 for 25" idea for some of SSL's fave short stories of the century

Rereading, recommending, highlighting, discussing, and just generally thinking about some of the "best" short stories from the last 25 years

I’m right now in the middle of wrapping up my semester, and thus my academic year. My final classes were last week, final essays are due today, and I’m hoping to be done with grading by the end of the week. I’ve also been sick the last few days; did an hour long submission call for HAD that got >500 submissions, which I read all of in three days; and am just kinda always at least a little disorganized and overwhelmed and behind.

Turns out, this is kind of where I find myself at the end of every semester. Looking back, I wrote this last summer:

At the beginning of summer, I was a little behind, was excited for a break after a pretty demanding semester, had some travel planned and some writing goals, and was just generally a little worn out, so decided to take a break. I said in a post, “we’ll back either end of June or first week of July!”… but then I took August off too. I felt a little bad, but it was incredibly productive, and rejuvenating, and just a lot of fun, and now I’m coming back rested and excited for the coming year!

Which is to say, that’s all probably more “personal update” than you need for a lit journal, but is the thinking behind taking the next couple of months off from publishing new stories (and accompanying author interviews). The idea is to take May and June off and be back with new stories in July!

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That said, I don’t always know how to take a complete break, and I had an idea to fill in some of these weeks off:

I’ve seen a couple of places this year — most notably, but not only, one of my fave podcasts, “The Big Picture” — doing assorted “25 for 25” lists. It’s really just using the year as a peg and an excuse for content, but also lists can be fun. And I thought it might be fun to do something similar for short stories.

So, in the coming weeks, and then probably here and there throughout the rest of the year, we’re going to spotlight some of our favorite short stories of the last 25 years. I threw the idea out to all the SSL contributors and am already starting to get back some really fun stuff and great ideas, and I’m excited to share with you all! Some lists, some longer form raves, some interviews with authors of fave stories. I don’t really plan on making a specific list of the top 25, but I love the idea as excuse for looking back, for spotlighting some fave stories, for interviewing some fave authors, and hopefully more!

I’d also love to turn this into a bigger discussion. Am really hoping to encourage people to use the comments on these posts, and I haven’t dug into other areas of Substack that much, but maybe I’ll experiment with using the chat feature on here some too?

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Submissions!

• Circling back to where I started, I’m a little behind, overwhelmed, etc., and so running a little longer completing the last round of submissions than I’d prefer, but hoping to finish reading and replying to everyone in the next couple of weeks, and definitely by the end of May!

• Submissions will open again in May. Meaning: on Thursday! The day after tomorrow!

Thanks!
-Aaron