This monthly column is published on the fourth Thursday of every month, and is a space to share information that doesn’t fit anywhere else in our publication. This includes a wide range of opportunities for writers, news and information, and subscribers’ recent success stories.
Opportunities:
Last Girls’ Club: The Witches’ Cosmo Summer is reading for an upcoming submission period is on the theme: Live and Die by Your Words. They publish horror/supernatural stories from the female gaze. They will open to submissions on April 1st, and close as soon as they reach capacity. Full details of the call are here.
Screen Door Press is an imprint of the University of Kentucky Press. Screen Door Press is dedicated to “discovering unique, exceptional, and varied voices representing Black literary traditions.” Their goal “is to publish thought-provoking books that use relatable characters, strong narratives, and beautiful language to champion diverse views from throughout the Black diaspora. ” They are open to submissions of Novel/novellas, Short Story Collections, poetry, and “other”. The editor is Crystal Wilkinson. Authors who are selected are awarded $5,000 as a prize as well as a publishing contract. You can see their submission page here. They close to submissions April 20th.
Flash Phantoms is reading for the theme of Evil Easter. The winning story will be featured as Story of the Month and receive $20. The deadline is March 29th, 2026. They only consider unpublished horror stories of 1,000 words, and unpublished micros of 100 words (title not included in word count). To learn more, go here.
The Rush Magazine is the online literary journal of the MFA program at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles. They are currently “looking for poetry that emphasizes form. The forms may vary – from sonnets to villanelles, from pastoral odes to elegies, and everything in between – however, no matter the form, the verse must contain a strong sense of structure. Please submit no more than six poems at a time, and do not exceed six pages.” They also accept micro fiction & micro non-fiction as well as photo poetry, video poetry, and photo stories.
News:
Back in January 2025, one of the news items for this column was that Lynne Freeman, an unpublished author, sued the bestselling author Tracy Wolff, her publisher Entangled, and her agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, over copyright infringement. You can see that piece here, for additional context. But now the matter has been settled. On March 16th, judge Colleen McMahon, ruled that Tracy Wolff did not plagiarize. One of the concluding notes was “Hot, sexy, dangerous boys—central to virtually all young adult romance novels—cannot be copyrighted.” If you have a Publisher’s Marketplace membership you can read the full story here.
I’ve written a lot about literary agent scams over the years (including this piece), and received a lot of emails from subscribers fed up with dealing with them. It was very interesting to me to read a piece by an agent who was impersonated by scammers. The literary agent Sally Ekus wrote an interesting Substack about that experience here.
Also, Dial Books for Young Readers, a long established and respected imprint of Penguin Random House, is closing. You can read more about it here, although currently there is very little information about what actually happened. I tried to learn more about what was happening, but with little headway. Although I ended up reading this interesting comment on Reddit as part of my research, which I think is very much worth reading, especially for authors of adult fiction interested in publishing with the Big Five. Now of course anyone can pretend to be anyone on Reddit, and one generally takes such comments with a grain of salt, but the commentator that left that comment has a long and consistent track record of posting and commenting.
Subscriber Success Stories:
Melissa Witcher’s flash fiction, The True Nature of Happiness, was published in The Mersey Review and her short story, Kill Tuesday, was published in Mania Magazine.
S.G. South’s short story Blue Durango was published by The Brussels Review.
Sharon Wagner’s book, Chorus of Crows, was published by Dreamsphere Books.
R. (Ron) Bremner‘s book, You Who Are the Stranger, was published by Westbrae Literary Group.
Kristen Hall-Geisler’s essay Meaning in Minnepolis was published by Pittsburgh Review of Books.
John Woodhouse’s story The Fire Escape was published in Commuterlit.
Mary Gilliland‘s poem Expect the Ants was published by Pedestal Magazine and her poem Continental Divide is in most recent issue of The Woven Tale Press.
Farin Martinez‘s piece Unprecedented Times was published by The Acentos Review.
Ian R. Villmore’s short story The Importance of Trust in Communication was published by Sci-Fi Shorts.
D.O. Moore’s short story Going was shortlisted in the 70th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest and was published by Jerry Jazz Musician.
Mark Pawlosky‘s story TRAPLINE was published by The Dolomite Review.
Barn Brand‘s poem One Last Time was published in The Wise Owl.
Margaret Lesh‘s poem Not From Around Here was published in Not One Of Us.
Melody Winkle’s story Cheerfulness, a translation from the German by Tim Krohn, was published in West Branch.
E.D. Edwards’ story was included in Wyld Magik: Fantasy Short Stories of Fae, Witches, and Magical Realms by Three Ravens Publishing.
Sandip Saha’s book Ills eroding the Society was published by ukiyoto.
Cheryl Ossola’s novel, How Long a Shadow, is available for preorder now, and is forthcoming from Cynren Press in November 2026.
Ioulia Lymperopoulou had two poems, On Course & Not Being Perfect is Being Good Enough, published in Fresh Words.
Cithara Patra‘s poem for my birthday, i asked for a way out was published by Tap Into Poetry.
Y. Len‘s On The F***ing Garden Path in Fiction was was republished by Lit Mag News, after originally being published in Breaking into Craft.
Denise Diehl’s story The Threat was published by Antipodean SF.
Cindy Kluck-Nygren’s piece The Power of a Teacher’s Red Pen was published Epistle Literary Magazine.
Kevin Kane’s book (Bob Dylan) Seeking Mirth and Beauty: Musings on How Things Come to Be, was published by Genius Book Publishing.
Mike Sluchinski had best birthday presents,best birthday presents two, and best birthday presents three published in the fib review . His ekphrastic poem, like a scar loves healing, was published The Ekphrastic Review.
Megan Wildhood‘s poems Having Children, Who Will Care for Old Me, and Scotophobia were published by The Soliloquist Journal.
Peter Gregg Slater‘s poem Things that go Trump in the Night in Bearing Witness: Poetry for Troubled Times by Sligo Creek Publishing and his short story, Lap 24, was published in Passager.
Lance Mason’s story Tips of One’s Fingers was included in Thalia Press’s Anthology Time after Time. Also three of his short stories won awards in different categories as part of the Best Travel Writing Awards.
Adrienne H. Lee‘s poem An Ode to Missing Out was published by Little Old Lady Comedy in January.
Charles Sartorius’s horror story Luck of the Irish was featured on MetaStellar.
John Marsters’ poems Bald Spot and Words were published in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine.
Caitlin McLean‘s piece The Party of Small Government Demands Twenty-Four-Hour Video Footage of Your Children was recently published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
F.I. Goldhaber‘s poem Loss was published in The Fib Review and their poem Aches of Aging was published in FLARE Magazine.
Rachel Turney‘s book Record Player Life (the b-side), was published this month with The Poetry Lighthouse.
Please send us an email at success.stories@authorspublish.com if you have a publication success you want to share in our next update. You must include a link to the publication. You can also include a link to your website (if you have one), and the publisher/journals main landing page. To be featured in the March update your work must be published no earlier than January. Work available for pre-order can be shared. Please note that we are only listing work that has been traditionally published by literary journals, magazines, or traditional presses. We are not covering vanity presses or self-published books. We are not vetting presses before adding them to this list. We can only list three successes per person per update.
Bio: Caitlin Jans has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-founder of Authors Publish and The Poetry Marathon. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including: The Literary Review of Canada, The Fiddlehead, Jelly Bucket, The Penn Review, The Adroit Journal, and Killer Verse. Her prose and poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, BILiNE, The Best Small Fictions Anthology, and The Best of the Net. You can learn more at her website or follow her on Facebook,
