Identity Theory
@IdentityTheory
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Online lit mag publishing fiction, poetry, CNF, interviews, micro, hybrid, & more. Est. 2000. Subs open.
Henderson, NV
Joined March 2007
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We publish writers who call us by the wrong name in their cover letters. We hire people who have typos in their resumes. Whatever, you know?
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Listen, we are one of 50 lit mags to have published a certain writer in the past year. And it's true: this makes us slop. A cartoon corgi for a profile pic! Lame enough to still be posting on (Twitter)! On a Saturday! Clearly no standards whatsoever. We love everybody.
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Danielle Rose is no longer affiliated with Identity Theory. We'll comment further on this tomorrow but wanted to acknowledge that what happened is not okay and we have responded. We don't take this lightly; we want you to feel welcome and supported. We are listening.
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We aren't a fancy lit mag. We aren't clever. We aren't better than you. We're just some people and a corgi and a few cats. Send us your writing or don't. If we pass on it, it's probably still good. Maybe it'll end up in the Best of Someplace Someyear. Whatever.
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Submissions have been slow since a member of the True Literary Elite outed us as a random website that publishes slop and garbage. We're fine with that. Think of how easy it'll be for you to hit your 50 pubs now that there's less competition. Submit now!
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Dear friends: Given the discourse our form rejection letter has spawned, we are sharing it with you. Please note that this letter is a group effort that incorporates feedback we got from Twitter users in the past. We aren't attached to it, and we are always open to suggestions.
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Why aren't more readings held at fast food joints and ice cream spots? Thinking about holding a reading at Dairy Queen.
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Someone was like "I need to withdraw my submission because you tweeted support for democrats" like wait what mag did you think you were submitting to? We published three interviews with Howard Zinn, people.
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@PreetBharara
That's a long time for a man to hold press conferences denigrating the electoral process in new and interesting ways. I can't imagine the news cycles we are fated to experience in the coming weeks.
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Editing a lit mag should be fun. Writing for a lit mag should be fun. Don't lose sight of the joy.
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What's up, y'all? Just dropped in to let you know we got a submission yesterday. That was nice. It was nice to get a submission.
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Many writers aspire to place their work in a "Big 432" lit journal. As the 433rd best lit journal, we can't help you fulfill that dream. But we are happy to provide a stepping stone for your greater literary ambitions. Consider sending us your work.
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Okay, who else among you has a poetry book that we should order to read during
#NationalPoetryMonth
?
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Happy 6th birthday to our dog. His name is Iroh. He is a corgi. He is our most distinguished editor. Thank you for trusting him with your work.
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Okay, here's the deal. We want to publish a whole lotta poems in April. In order for us to publish a whole lotta poems in April, you've gotta send us a whole lotta poems. Send us a whole lotta poems here.
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If you had to start a lit mag in the next five minutes, what would you name it?
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Not seeing many literary posts on (Twitter) anymore. Drop your latest publications or news here so we can see it! ⬇️
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Brainstorming new ideas to reach new people. Thinking of sending personalized rejections to writers who have never heard of us and have not submitted anything. That ought to work.
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Just out walking the dog and a woman pulled up in a van and asked if her son could pet the corgi. Her son got out and pet the corgi. "He just loves corgis," she said. They said thanks and drove away. Their bumper sticker said, "Enjoy your journey."
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“What Gabe did for me (and what I now understand he did for so many) was to refuse to leave me behind, even though he considered himself somewhat left behind."
—
@baumansbrain
remembers his friend and fellow writer/veteran Gabe Hudson.
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Oh that? That's my about-to-send-an-acceptance stick.
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People still don't like our form rejection. Soon we'll be down to just NO. Then people will want us to add the things we took out. It's an endless cycle.
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Congrats to our 2023
@SundressPub
Best of the Net nominees!👏👏👏
POETRY:
@Read_Instead
@amorak
@bkolcow
@SolwayEzra
@aliner
@PBndJulia
FICTION:
@LeighChadwick5
@RobinZlotnick
CNF:
@emmy_ritchey
Liz Shulman
ART:
@AMPoProse
Proud to have been a home to your work this year.
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No hard numbers on this—and this is not meant to be a slight against poets (
#NotAllPoets
)— but it seems like poets are the only ones who email us back with personal insults after receiving rejections.
Anyway, running a lit mag is extremely rewarding and everyone should do it.
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We're probably nobody's dream publication, but we often get to publish our dream contributors, which is nice.
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Ready to move on to the discourse about acceptance letters.
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We (, the website) turned 24 years old this week.
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Literary (Twitter) is feeling pretty dead, so we're gonna retweet a bunch of random literary stuff now.
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Best cover letter we got this week started with "No one wants to publish this."
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We must withdraw this tweet as it has been accepted for publication elsewhere.
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Poetry submissions are open for the first time since last summer. Micro poetry submissions are open for the first time ever. Everything else is open, too. Get in while the getting is good.
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Identity Theory has a new poetry team!
Welcome these additions to our staff/community:
POETRY EDITOR
Sara Sams (
@sasamsz
)
ASSOCIATE POETRY EDITORS
Justin Aoba (
@Justin_Aoba
)
Lisa Cantwell (
@lisamcantwell
)
Elia Karra (
@eliakarra
)
Vic Nogay (
@vicnogay
)
Tianyu Yi (No Twitter)
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BIG NEWS ABOUT SMALL THINGS: Micro submissions are now open for fiction and CNF under 500 words.
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Thinking about becoming a member of the literary community. Is there a secret handshake? How do we join?
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Crazy how some people won't trust teachers to teach but will trust them to use guns.
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As a lit mag, we've spent decades telling the good weird from the bad weird.
So yeah: Down with the bad weird. Down with the fascist weird, the women-hating weird, the joyless weird, the soulless & evil weird.
Up with the laughing, dancing, singing, poetry-writing weird.
IYKYK
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We don't even have "Review" or "Quarterly" or "Yorker" in our name—total joke of a mag tbh
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Imagine being so bad at your job that after four years your best argument for staying employed is that your creepy friend produced some dubious emails from some kid's laptop.
Trump is betting that no one cares about their own lives - but care about his scandal of the week - smearing hunter Biden - the ghoulliani lap top ?
200 thousand dead
Had enough ?
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There's a misconception that lit mags are only read by their staff and contributors, that no one else really cares about them. This is simply not true.
...Right?
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Did we mention that our poetry submissions are open again?
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Today's poetry prompt is the subject line in the 4th newest email in your inbox.
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In case you're wondering, almost none of the pieces we publish are solicited. 5% tops. We are slush pile addicts.
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Congrats to Identity Theory's first-ever Best Microfiction nominees:
@melostrom
and
@nomad_sw18
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Probably gonna send some acceptances today if that's okay with you.
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Writers: Where did you send your very first lit mag submission?
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A young Gabe Hudson, 2002, when we first became acquainted. Heartbroken to hear he is gone.
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We are in the process of addressing the situation regarding recent tweets from one of our editors that did not come from this account and do not reflect the values of Identity Theory.
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Special thanks to those who have shown us patience, understanding, and support over the past week. We remain dedicated to providing a welcoming home for your writing, and we are hard at work revamping our poetry staff and reading submissions. Lots of good stuff ahead.
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Accidentally sent two acceptance letters for the same piece this morning. We are raising the bar for lit mags everywhere. You all have to send multiple acceptance letters for the same piece now. Otherwise people will wonder why they only got *one.*
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Woke up to an acceptance from ourselves.
The most important acceptance.
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Write a little story. Send it to some strangers on the internet. See what happens.
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We're launching a new section for blended/hybrid literary work. It is called Un-Identified. You can submit here:
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Don't mean to brag but we just got a fiction submission.
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We are here to offer financial advice. Our financial advice is to spend more money on books.
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Our friend who is a literary agent says tricolor corgis are having a heck of a time trying to get book deals these days. If you're a tricolor corgi with a brilliant novel no one will even meet with you. You end up running an obscure online lit mag or something.
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If you think our rejection letters are bad, you should see our acceptance letters. "I guess we can take this. It's pretty weak, but it's been a slow month, so maybe we can find room. No one's gonna read it anyway. We'll let you know when it's up. Please don't bother us til then."
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The
@TBQuarterly
effect on lit mags: When a submission contains a Taco Bell reference, the reader now assumes it was written for Taco Bell Quarterly.
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Current submission queue:
Backed up in poetry due to high volume—still reading April subs.
Reading early/mid-June fiction subs.
Reading July CNF.
Feel free to check in if you sent something before then. We're still working through decisions on some older fiction and CNF.
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Gonna suggest a rejection exchange with The New Yorker.
They'd tell people, "This is not a fit for us, but you should try Identity Theory."
We'd tell people, "This is not a fit for us, but you should try The New Yorker."
Could work out for everyone.
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Just sent ourselves a rejection for a test submission in Submittable. That one stung.
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Our new form rejection is just going to be a picture of Joe Manchin.
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We should publish a poem called "The Reasons for Withdrawal," made up of lines from reasons people have given for withdrawing their poems. Today we got one that just said one word: "bruh."
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So proud of
@Will_Musgrove
and Rebecca Winterer for having their Identity Theory stories selected for 2024 Best Small Fictions.
Also, big congrats to Identity Theory contributors
@kylerseibel
and
@BethanyJarmul
for making it into BSF with work published in other journals!
The selections for the 2024 Best Small Fictions anthology have been announced! Congrats to these great authors & pieces!
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Can't believe [X number] of you are following [whoever]. Don't you know that account just tweeted something bad? The fact that you randomly gave them a polite follow 2 years ago is a reflection of your poor character. I have time to keep up with all this because I'm dead inside.
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For every submission we receive today, we'll donate one insulting tweet to a pro-gun politician in need of receiving one.
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"My mother reminds me I come from a long line of shoppers": a Micro Monday reading by
@Chelsea_Stickle
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Welcome our new poetry editor: Sara Sams
Sara teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arizona. She has served on the editorial staff of Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Waxwing. She is the author of Atom City (2021).
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Your monthly reminder that there is almost never a good reason to respond to a rejection email.
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Submission guidelines for our new micro section are coming soon. Get your little sub-500-word stories ready for us.
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We need to be proactive, not reactive. Instead of receiving submission status inquiries, we need to send *submitter* status inquiries. Like, "Hey, we saw you sent us a few poems. How's your life going? How's the fam? What are you getting up to today?"
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Our highest acceptance rate is for CNF. Our lowest acceptance rate is for poetry.
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If you submit to us, you won't get 15 minutes of fame, but you might get 15 years of people all over the world finding your work via random Google searches.
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Financial transparency in lit mags is important. So here's an update:
1. We lost money last year.
2. We will lose money this year.
3. We were just informed we have $10 in Crumbl Cookie cash.
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After decades of rewriting and revising our form rejection letters we still get 1-2 complaints about our rejection letters each year. Maybe we'll hold a contest to get people to write us a new form rejection letter. But then what would we tell the non-winners?
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Submissions are open until the end of August.
Submissions will be closed in September.
We will reopen submissions in October.
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We admire confidence. If you've never been published by us before, consider including "Identity Theory (forthcoming)" in the publication-credit portion of your author bio when submitting your story to us.
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What's the best part of having a story published in an online literary journal? What inspires you to send out submissions?
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Did you mess up a title in your poem? Did you forget to title something? Did you submit it to the wrong section? Who cares? We're humans, not filing robots.
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Not to brag but we published two of the best nonfiction pieces you'll read anywhere this week: "Seeing Scars" by
@JillianLuft
and "Forever" by
@LeighChadwick5
.
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Fiction submissions will open again on Thursday, August 1st.
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Main thing we learned watching tonight's insurrection hearing is that Trump is 100% that guy who responds to a poetry rejection with a personal insult.
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Congrats to the dozen Identity Theory contributors who made the Wigleaf longlist, including
@LotusTongue
@jackbedell
@DianeGotAuthor
@BethanyJarmul
@melostrom
@kylerseibel
@lapis_lazuli11
and IT fiction editor
@AbbieDollWrites
, plus
@Will_Musgrove
for his IT story "Demolition."
The
@Wigleaf
Top 50 2024 & the Longlist are up! Thank you to our Guest Selecting Editor
@MauriceRuffin
& to our Readers & Associate Series Editors! Let’s celebrate writers, readers, & journals—all for very short fictions. All for the love: ! ❤️🌻✨
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"Whenever I finish writing a short story, I submit it to Identity Theory first. They are the finest online literary magazine of this era."
—Mark Twain
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If you want to be a writer, go for a swim. Swimming will force you to put down your phone.
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Everyone who submitted today followed our submission guidelines closely. We only got one submission today, but still—
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SUMMER OF SONNETS!
1. Submit one sonnet to us between now and Labor Day.
2. Send it to poetry
@identitytheory
.com.
3. Include "Sonnet" and the poem title in your email subject line.
4. Include a bio and other info as you wish.
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