We like simple plots with complex characters. Stories with forward motion and a bite that matches its bark.

The joke goes that Columbo named his basset hound “Dog” because it was the only thing he’d respond to. At Dog Named Dog Press (DNDP), we take that spirit and run with it. Founded in 2025 and based in Islip Terrace, New York, DNDP is a home for writers who fall into the in-between: too genre for the literary world, but too literary for most genre publications. We champion fiction that sits in the gaps.

Our inspirations stretch wide — Raymond Carver and Hemingway, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown, Shirley Jackson and Megan Abbott, Flannery O’Connor and Elmore Leonard, Alan Moore and Frank Miller, and the list goes on.

No matter who it is, we like simple plots with complex characters. Stories with forward motion and a bite that matches its bark.

We publish work that can only be called what it is—

Like a dog named Dog.

DNDP Quarterly

Prompt for this Open Call:
"The Eternal Sisyphus"
We want complete stories told quickly about the eternal Sisyphus—ordinary people keeping their heads down in a broken world. No, really, break reality, but have the characters living mundanely inside it.

Examples:
A mechanic still opens their shop every morning, even though aliens landed six months ago in the next state and no one cares anymore.

A medical breakthrough conquered death, and now rent never stops coming due—so you still have three back-to-back meetings.

Robots walk among us for so long now that we’re over it, but your boss is an android and schedules mandatory trust-building exercises.

Your town suffers a ritualized murder spree every Thursday the 12th, but you can’t miss a paycheck and have to work the midnight shift at the gas station, as if it’s any other day.

Frogs have rained from the sky every April for six years, and no one knows why, and tonight you’re helping a friend look for their runaway kid.

Break reality however you want—but let it be our reality with characters still pushing their boulders, having to go through their lives as if everything is normal. It’s not on them to solve the broken world, they just exist in it.

DNDP Quarterly Issue 2 | Flash Fiction

If your poetry feels like it would be a good fit with DNDP, send 3–5 poems. I’m not even sure how to describe what we want—give me the David Lynch version of Robert Penn Warren, Hafiz, and John Berryman. Give me poetry that sounds like Nick Cave and Tom Waits.

DNDP Quarterly Issue 2 | Poetry

Comic Strips
Growing up, my grandmother clipped newspaper comics for me every morning, and that left a soft spot for them. DNDP is interested in standalone comics and 4-part serials—funny or serious. I can’t fully define what we’re looking for, but a 4-part Columbo-style mystery sounds amazing, as would a Zits/Ziggy/Cathy-style one-panel strip about the struggles of being a writer/artist, or something that pokes fun at genre tropes while embracing them. We’re suckers for meta writing and humor. We are not interested in political cartoons.

DNDP Quarterly Issue 2 | Comic Strip

As writers, a lot of us are haunted by things we encountered once in a movie, TV, song, or writing that stuck with us, and we couldn’t ever shake. And if put under a microscope, our writing would show hints of this haunting. If you have a scene from a movie or show, a specific camera shot, an encounter with a song, a needle drop, anything that grabbed you and never let go, we’d love to hear it. Note: This isn’t a review or a retelling of the scene—we want to know why it haunts you so it can haunt us too.

DNDP Quarterly Issue 2 | "The Haunting of DNDP"

"I'd Watch That for a Dollar"
We all know that moment:

“You’ve never seen [Insert the same movie everyone has this reaction with]?!”

Maybe we add it to our list of Things We’ll Try to Get Around To. A list that only grows, never shrinks. But half the time, that moment makes us want to watch it less.

Most days we don’t have the bandwidth for something new, heavy, or culturally urgent. We want to sink into the couch, turn our brains off, and throw on the fast-food of streaming. Comfort junk.

We’re looking for hidden gems and guilty pleasures — the movies or shows you’d never pay full price for, but you’d happily watch if it’s on Tubi or buried in the clearance bin at Blockbuster. Not ironic love but real affection. The stuff you reach for when you’re hungover, or couch-locked, or needing something that asks absolutely nothing of you.

We don’t want the latest hit or anything trending.

We want the bones buried in your backyard that you dig up when needed and think, damn, this still rules.

Guidelines:

One movie/show per entry

One entry per person per submission period

Maximum 900 words

Must be available on a streaming service (not rental-only)

Write with love, not snark

DNDP Quarterly Issue 2 | "I'd Watch That for a Dollar"

"Columbo Corner"
Dog Named Dog got its namesake from Columbo, so talking about our love for the show is something we always want to talk about—but we don’t want standard reviews of an episode, we want a breakdown of your favorite episode through your eyes, through your writing, through your experience. We’re not interested in beat-for-beat retelling.

DNDP Quarterly Issue 2 | "Columbo Corner"

Short Stories
Word count: 3,000–5,500 words

Any genre is welcome, but we’re sniffing out work with forward motion, earned endings, with flawed and complicated people—and we like when the writing sits with them rather than looking down on them. Our tastes lean more hard-boiled literary than anything overly flowery or purely atmospheric. We’re generally not a home for twist endings, slow meditations, or prose that draws attention away from the story.

We tend to favor crime and crime-adjacent fiction, but we’re open to sci-fi, westerns, and horror. Keep in mind:

Sci-fi — More Blade Runner, Robocop; less Ender’s Game.
Westerns — Elmore Leonard energy; also Unforgiven, True Grit.
Horror — The Frighteners, Midnight Mass; not Art the Clown.
Fantasy — If you can make fantasy hard-boiled, please send it.

What We’re Not Looking For
Novel excerpts (unless requested)
Children’s fiction
Young Adult
Memoir or personal essays
Erotica
Full-length manuscripts
Translations
We are not interested in stories in which violence toward women, children, animals, or marginalized groups is the point of the story or is glorified. These elements can exist, but they shouldn’t be the focus.

DNDP Quarterly

Highlights

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