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:
The Poetry Marathon is starting on June 13th 2026, and registration ends on June 8th. The Poetry Marathon is a yearly online event where poets challenge themselves to write 24 poems in 24 hours or 12 poems in 12 hours, at the rate of one poem per hour. It is completely free.
The DIY Authors Podcast is open to submissions through a Google form, for work to share via “audio magazine.” They prefer fiction and poetry with emphasis on fantasy, sci-fi, and humor, but all genres are welcome. To learn more, please go to their website here.
Afterbodies, a new literary journal, pays a 20$ flat rate honorarium to all contributors. They are only open to submissions from authors under the age of 25. They say “We seek writing that tacks, cajoles, and resurfaces the unseen.” They close to submissions for their first issue on July 1st.
Backsliders Magazine is a “literary & arts magazine for those who decided to leave the church behind.” They are open to submissions.
News
DOGE-Led Cancellations Ruled Unconstitutional
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan has sided with The Authors Guild, and declared that the DOGE-led cancellation of humanities grants was unconstitutional. You can learn more here.
Children’s Book Controversy
There’s been a lot of controversy around a quote from established children’s book author Mac Barnett’s essay collection Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children. Barnett wrote “I have a nagging fear that children’s literature suffers from a slightly higher crud percentage than literature as a whole. So I now offer Barnett’s Addendum to Sturgeon’s Law: Maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.” You can read more about the quote and the controversy here. As someone who has two children, and has spent a large part of the last decade reading kidlit to them, I have to say that 1.) Some of my favorite books of all time are in fact kidlit, and 2) a large proportion of the kidlit out there, is indeed, crud, although I would not put a number on the amount or say it’s larger than other genres. I would also argue that my children and I do not always agree on what is “crud” and what is not, which is particularly important given that the intended audience is indeed not adults. Barnett has apologized for the statement.
CLMP Endorses AI-Focused Company
We don’t have an official generative AI policy at Authors Publish yet, but currently our approach is to do our best to steer clear of reviewing any publication that publishes content that features generative AI work, images or words. We’ve quietly de-listed a few markets because of this (including Jane Friedman’s newsletter), and passed on reviewing many more. While researching this month I encountered a publication called Infernal Moose. They had a very varied track record in terms of what they had actually published. But I found it interesting that they talked openly about their editorial process and how many rounds of edits on their about pages. Many small presses are not very active in terms of editing. But then, intrigued by the name of the link in the header I clicked on Tools. Nowhere on that page do they mention generative AI, but it was clear to me based on what they were offering that they must rely on it.
Sure enough, when I clicked on the link to company page they run focused on editing, Familiar, they do make it clear they rely on generative AI. They also mention the CLMP endorsement here (along with one from BISG):
In case you were curious, if this endorsement was unauthorized (this happens more often than you think with writing contests), it was not. If you search CLMP’s website events hosted by the founder of Familiar and Infernal Moose, Jake Keuhlen, about Future was shared. I cannot see all the details about the partnership because I am not a member of the CLMP, but I’m happy to hear more details from anyone who is.
Commonwealth Prize Controversy
The results of this year’s Commonwealth Prize has been highly controversial because a winning short story appears to be at least in part AI generated. You can read more about it here.
Subscriber Success Stories:
F.I. Goldhaber’s short story Rebellion was reprinted in Issue 26: “Conscripted to Fight” of Zooscape and their Fibonacci Stain appeared on crime poetry weekly The Five-Two. They were also long listed by the erbacce-prize for poetry.
Stephanie Jones’s poems Yards at Night and Mapping Jessica Way were published in Pictura Journal. Her poem How to Make Friends with Grubs was published by The Metaworker Literary Magazine, and her piece This Novelist Was Determined To Start Helpful Conversations About Mental Illness was published by HuffPost Latino Voices.
Angie Athanassiades‘s memoir in fragments, I Am Twig, Bone, Feather, was published by Vine Leaves Press.
Kurt G. Schmidt‘s piece Random Acts of Kindness was published by Feed the Holy and his piece My Boss Said I Should Learn to Wash the Baby was published by Wilderness House Literary Review.
Ian Douglas Robertson’s The Sea Goddess was published by Sphinx, an imprint of Sul Books.
Peter Kaczmarczyk’s book More Than a Whisper was published by Keeping the Flame Alive Press.
John Turres’ Two Crosses Mark The Spot was published by Cliffhanger Magazine, and I Know What You Did On This Date was published by Short-Story.Me.
Dale Patrick Smrekar’s short story, Life As It Is, was published by Freedom Fiction Journal.
H.Y. Motte‘s story Demon In Heaven is available for preorder in volume 1 of Flesh Fiction volume 1 published by Not Quite Write Press.
Rachel Turney’s poetry collection, Record Player Life (the b-side), was published by The Poetry Lighthouse. Parlyaree Press published her poetry collection Retired Wannabe Club Kid.
CV Wild‘s poem After we’re gone was published in Root Smoke.
Laurinda Lind’s haikus appeared in The Zen Space, The Cicada’s Cry, and Chrysanthemum.
Xu Xi‘s story collection Horizon Hong Kong was published by Singapore Unbound.
Louisa Prince’s flash The Pearl Choker was published in Sky Island Journal.
Michael Peach’s book The Whore: or of Bureaucracy an Adult Fable, was published by Translucent Eyes Press.
Lucia Lemieux’s poem Waning Time was selected as an honourable mention for the Spring 2025 Poetry contest from Starboard Press.
Jennifer Miller’s poem Quiet Reclamation was published in Forget-Me-Not Journal.
Charles Sartorius’s micro horror story Oschter Haws appeared in Flash Phantoms.
Sara Winslow‘s flash Promenade was published by The Scop.
J. J. Hillard’s story My Stardust was published in Allegory.
Cithara Patra‘s poem under the snow was published by The Alexander Review. Another poem, Mint Green, was published by Dark Winter Lit, And another poem, weeds, was published by The Scop.
Mario Fenech’s story A Tangle of Clothes Hangers was published in Borderless Journal.
Michael E. Theroux’s piece Ya Gotta Wonder was published by Fifty- Word Stories.
Nancy Franklin‘s essay was published in Chicken Soup for The Soul: I Can’t Stop Laughing Stories from Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Rebecca Petersen’s short story The Test was published in Spank the Carp. Her short story Mary Anna’s Trench was published in Hedge Apple. Her CNF piece What I Buried Under Buddha’s Butt (or Things I Still Keep was published by Book of Matches.
Daniel M. Zibman’s poem 28 May 2016, 10 days after Your death, was published in the Journal of Expressive Writing.
Chen Du‘s and Xisheng Chen‘s translation of Yan An’s Story of Searching for Spring in the Suburbs, Hymn to an Envoy, and Post Office were published by The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. They also published translations of three of Yan An’s poems in the International Poetry Review. They also published a translation of Wang Jibing’s poem Low Flight in The Baffler.
Megan Wildhood‘s essay Fight Song, was published in Jerry Jazz Musician. Her poem, Just Married, was published in Sybil and Vision Tunnel, a short story, was published in Straylight Magazine.
Stephanie Ross’s poem Fingers Together with Invisible Pearls was published by the Institute for Spiritual Poetry and her poem The Art Thief was published in Penstricken.
Al Simon’s story I made him a Sandwich was published by Seven Story Publishing.
Sarah Loise’s poem was published in Skylight47’s summer issue.
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 June update your work must be published no earlier than March. 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.
