It’s been a bleak year for short fiction venues. First, last July, there was the beloved Shimmer Magazine. Then, in August, Cicada Magazine shuttered, too. Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show recently announced it was closing its doors, and just last week, my alma mater and original home Apex Magazine announced its indefinite hiatus.
That’s FOUR amazing (and pro-level) markets gone. Besides just being excellent places to read great fiction, as I’m getting more work out, I’m realizing how much it’s starting to constrict the pro-market pipeline. There are a ton of wonderful pro-markets out there, but several are indefinitely closed to submissions, and it’s beginning to feel like a new ice age for short fiction.
What is going on, folks?! Tell the universe that it needs to get its act together, otherwise I’ll start contemplating opening my own market, and I do not need that kind of aggravation!
Maggie Slater 