Aaah! We announced this via email, and the slots filled within 10 minutes. It's okay, though—you can join the waitlist here.
Indie lit has problems. Always has (and probably always will, because people be peopling). Here’s a big one:
You've always heard that the best way to get published in a journal is to familiarize yourself with the journal first. But often, that means spending money you don't have (see: writer).
Recently, we sat down with Gerald and Aria from The Georgia Review (Pushcart, BAE, BAP, BASS, and Pen America-winning literary magazine out of UGA) to talk about how we might solve this problem. Somewhere in that talk, they pointed to the room behind us, saying there are boxes of gorgeous backlist issues there. (For those who don't know—because we didn’t and had to ask—backlist issues are the overstock of previous issue printings. Most big print mags have them.) Together, we decided to create The Backlist Experiment: a way to read GR without paying up front.
We're looking for 30 writers. 10 poets, 10 fiction writers, and 10 CNF writers. Over the next three months, GR's current editorial team will send you one backlist issue per month, starting with a genre-specific issue. Each issue comes with a note from the current editors about what they appreciate about the work featured. These issues are totally free, provided by The Georgia Review. And Chill Subs will cover all of the shipping costs, no matter where you are in the world.
Spots filled? SIGN UP FOR THE WAITLIST
If you've never read a physical copy of a lit mag before, we encourage you to sign up fast. Nothing makes literary publishing feel quite so real as holding a beautifully printed issue of The Georgia Review.
And if this fills up by the time you see this email, don't worry, we'll be doing more and more experiments like this in the coming years as part of our Incubator Project. So hop on that waitlist to be first in line when the next one rolls around.
And hey, if you run a lit mag and have an experiment in mind, hit us up!
Benjamin Davis
Benjamin has stories and poems in 25+ literary journals like Booth, Wigleaf, and Moon City Review. His book of poems, The King of FU (2018), was such a smashing success it shocked the indie press who printed it into an early grave. He is now working on his first six novels.