Skip to content

news

Author Photos and Alt Text (and Lack Thereof)

“Alternative (Alt) Text is meant to convey the β€œwhy” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. It is read aloud to users by screen reader software, and it is indexed by search engines. It also displays on the page if the image fails to load…” β€” Harvard University Digital Accessibility Guide Context: Write

Go to Post >>

Find Us on Social

We haven’t been very active on social media since we ran screaming away from Xitter. We want to, but we haven’t found many people on the services where we have an account. If you use any of the following, please connect with us.

Go to Post >>

Notices Are Complete for #10

It is my belief that I have responded to all submissions that we received for Issue #10. If you submitted work for #10, you should have gotten either an Acceptance or a Declined email. If not, please reach out via the contact form and let me know.

Go to Post >>

Theme & Prompt for #11

The theme and visual prompt for Issue #11 has been posted. #11 will be published on May 13, 2024, with a submission deadline of March 29, 2024. Before submitting work, please be familiar with the Submission Guidelines.

Go to Post >>

#9 PDF Proof Sent

A PDF proof of each contributor’s work for Issue 9 has been sent out by email. Please review and respond with edits or corrections at your earliest convenience. And, of course, reach out if you haven’t seen your proof.

Go to Post >>

Check Your Email! Check Your Spam Folder! Check Your Privilege!

Updated Jan 2, 1:40 PM PST – The second paragraph below incorrectly referred to Issue #10 notices and acceptances. It has been corrected to say Issue 9. My covid recovery is mostly complete. Don’t ever say, β€˜it’s like a cold.’ It is insidious and I am concerned about long term effects. While in the midst of it, I also stepped

Go to Post >>

Submissions Glitch

I’ve been wondering why I haven’t had many new submissions recently and I just found out why. Our submission form has been saving the submitted data to the wrong databse. Not a big deal and an easy fix. This is just to say that the last dozen or so submissions have not been replied to with an acknolwedgement email. I’ll

Go to Post >>

Bad Timing

I am sick with Covid. Today is day two of symptoms, and they are acelerating quickly. I’m going to try and get all issue 9 submissions responded to by the end of today. Last time I had Covid I was very sick and unable to function for almost two weeks. I will do my best to launch 9 on Jan

Go to Post >>

Submissions for 9 Have Been Acknowledged

This is just to say that we have sent email messages acknowledging the receipt of all submissions for Issue 9 (and some for 10). This is NOT to say that we have accepted or declined1 any work yet. Those notices will be going out sometime between now and the end of December. But, if you submitted work to us and

Go to Post >>

To Warn or Not to Warn

We have used Content Warnings (aka Trigger Warnings) on a few of the works we’ve published. In all of these cases, the warning was added at the request of the contributor. We are now questioning this practice…

Go to Post >>

Contributor Contract

When we accept work for publication we send contributors an email which acts as a contract. The content in this email is a work in progress, and always subject to change. But we won’t change any agreement that you (and we) have already agreed to. This is what the email contract looks like for Issue 9: Hi NAME, We are

Go to Post >>

Style Guide Available

We’ve just posted a Style Guide for the PDF and Web versions of our Journal. All contributors should be familiar with, not only our requirements, but also with the technical limitations that come with publishing on the web. Please read it before you submit work to us. (We’ll make links to this guide more prominent in the coming days.) For

Go to Post >>

Review: Steady by Anne Whitehouse

Anne Whitehouse’s poetry collection, Steady, isn’t a poetry collection. Rather, it isn’t just a poetry collection. I, perhaps naively, set about reading it without first getting a sense of its length or breadth. The book is divided into four Parts. The first, second and fourth sections, titled Morning Swim, Signs, and Blue respectively, each contain exactly 10 poems. I didn’t

Go to Post >>

Letters

Back when I used to subscribe to paper periodicals, I always loved reading the ‘Letters to the Editors’ first thing when a new issue dropped. I especially appreciated it when Letters would be responded to, no matter by whom. I would love to have that kind of interaction with our readers. Commenting is perfect for brief responses to individual works,

Go to Post >>

Comments Are Easy and Encouraged

All it takes to comment on any work that appears in Exist Otherwise is to enter a name (it can be anything including ‘anonymous’), an email address (it can be fake), and your comment, then click submit. If you don’t include a link in your comment, it will appear immediately without having to be approved. You can also save your

Go to Post >>

Bluesky and Other Social

I’m on Bluesky as @patamystic.bsky.social. That’s my personal account. I’ll create an @existotherwise account as soon as I get another invite code. I’ve only been using Bluesky for a few minutes but it looks like there’s an extensive #WritingCommunity there. It looks more promising than Threads. I’m also still using Mastodon: @ex************@wr*****.exchange. Wondering if I should start using Facebook again…

Go to Post >>

Introducing Color

There’s a blog post in the works, so what follows is the tl;dw*. Beginning with issue 9 in January, 2024, we are now accepting any kind of artwork, and not just black and white photography. * Too Long, Didn’t Write (tl;dr is internet shorthand for “Too long, didn’t read,” which is usually used by someone commenting on something they probably

Go to Post >>

Changes to Editorial Calendar

If you’ve recently reviewed our editorial calendar, please have another look at it. We’ve made some changes that will give us a little more time for proofing of both, the PDF and web versions of each issues contents. We will now be sending Contributors a PDF proof on the 1st day of the month of publication, and a website proof

Go to Post >>

Pay Bump

Beginning with Issue 8, we now pay $15 per accepted work. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that we are able to do this partly by cutting back the number of works accepted for each issue. The first seven issues of Exist Otherwise included between 20 and 25 works per issue. The plan was to cap

Go to Post >>

Issue 8 is Coming Soon

The first draft of Issue 8 is in the works. Contributors to this issue are asked to keep an eye out for a proof copy in their email very soon. The full contents will be published here on Nov. 13.

Go to Post >>

Ghost? What Ghost?

I think I put it behind the Substack. I am my own worst enemy. I’m a child of an obsessive-compulsive mother, and a just plain obsessive father. My daughter used to tell people that I alphabetized the goods in our pantry. She was wrong. Things were organized according to function first, then by date (purchase or expiration), then by size.

Go to Post >>

Responses for #8 Have Been Sent

We have completed processing all submissions that we received for Issue #8. If you submitted work for #8, you should have received a response from us. But we’re human (mostly) and it’s possible we’ve screwed up and missed a submission or two. Please reach out and let us know. We are now accepting submissions for Issue #9, due in January.

Go to Post >>

Reading Period for #8 Closes Friday the 13th

I got married on a Friday the 13th. It wasn’t October, so tomorrow’s not my anniversary, but it’s the final day to have work considered for inclusion in issue 8, to be published on November 13. I’m flying from San Francisco to Ireland tomorrow so I won’t be able to respond to anything until the weekend, or Monday. As usual,

Go to Post >>

Updated Word Counts

We’ve simplified our Submission Guidelines, including a slight modification of word counts. The maximum length for all submissions is 1000 words. This is a bitless than it used to be. Our submission forms now include an option to specify which issue a submission is for. For this reason, we’re now limiting the number of allowable submissions to be per month,

Go to Post >>

Attention Visually Impaired Visitors

(This may also be of interest to anyone who notices some inconsistency in our use of Featured Images for posts here.) There is a bug in the Ghost publishing system that limits the amount of characters in “Alt Text” descriptions for Featured Images to 125. That’s characters, not words. Featured Images are the ones that appear above the title, as

Go to Post >>

Theme & Prompt for Issue 9

The theme and prompt for Issue 9, to be published on January 13, has been posted to the website. Theme “I love you. That should be enough for the whole solar system.” β€” Claude Cahun Prompt Claude cahun as an angel. Through October 13, we are reading work for Issue 8, due in November. To avoid confusion, and to help

Go to Post >>