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Exploring the art of prose

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Editorial Feedback Event

Editorial Feedback Event
March 1 – March 30, 2023

FINAL WEEK!

Looking for new ways to approach
your prose this spring season?
Want a fresh look on a certain manuscript?
You are very welcome to submit your work for this event!

Why request feedback? Maybe you’re stuck on a scene, or can’t quite find a home for a particular story or essay. New eyes on your work can make all the difference in your revision process. As we all know, writing successful prose is a lifelong endeavor that takes time, perseverance, and patience. As writers, we can continue to thrive through a strong sense of community by sharing our work with others eager to give feedback.

CRAFT offers editorial feedback on creative prose up to 6,000 words. We’ve carefully chosen a team of qualified editors to provide thoughtful critique. For each piece sent, you’ll receive line-level marginal notes, as well as a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. While editorial feedback is inherently subjective, our suggestions will always be actionable and encouraging. Please allow up to twelve weeks to receive your feedback materials.

For your convenience and savings, we offer two options—single letters and triple letters. Rates are detailed below. Triple letter packages offer an 8% discount.

To request ONE editorial feedback letter (plus notes) on your submission,
click here:
submit

To request THREE editorial feedback letters (plus notes) on your submission,
click here:submit

Add to Calendar

All work sent through this event will also be considered for publication in CRAFT. Should we accept your work, the feedback fee will be refunded.

If you have questions about submissions, please send an email to: contact (at) craftliterary (dot) com

Testimonials from Previous Recipients of CRAFT Editorial Feedback:

As a published author of 75+ academic and professional articles, reports, and two (academic) books, I have to say that David K. Slay’s feedback on my fledgling short story “John Huff” was the most thorough, perceptive, and helpful feedback and writing coaching I have ever received. I am very grateful for their attention to detail, voice, and flow—something I craved as I continue my journey into this daunting genre.  —Marjorie S.

I was so pleased with the feedback I received from Kyle Cochrun. His comments demonstrated that he understood what I was trying to accomplish with the essay and that he was “thinking with me” as he closely read my draft. He didn’t make a single comment that left me scratching my head—in fact, just the opposite. His feedback was like a private class in essay writing, and helped me see how to look at my drafts for unplumbed opportunities and to apply the strengths he identified to develop those opportunities. I’ve already completed the revisions and believe the piece is much stronger for his guidance.  —Aggie S.

Rates:

  • Flash fiction / flash creative nonfiction up to 1,000 words (one flash piece or up to three micro* pieces totaling fewer than 1,000 words): $59 for one letter OR $149 for three letters
  • Short story / creative nonfiction essay from 1,000 to 3,500 words (one piece): $79 for one letter OR $199 for three letters
  • Short story / creative nonfiction essay from 3,500 to 6,000 words (one piece): $99 for one letter OR $249 for three letters

*For our purposes, micros should be about 333 words maximum apiece, please. Include all three micros in ONE document.

How you can help us when sending work for our review:

  • Please send only .doc or .docx files if possible, so that we can use MS Word’s Track Changes for our marginal notes.
  • Kindly double-space and use Times New Roman 12.

Guidelines:

  • CRAFT Editorial Feedback is open to all prose writers.
  • Please send fiction or creative nonfiction only.
  • International submissions are welcome.
  • Please submit work primarily written in English, but conceptually or stylistically necessary code-switching is warmly welcomed.
  • Please adhere to the 6,000 word count maximum.
  • If sending up to three micros, include all pieces in ONE document.
  • Work that has received editorial feedback is not eligible for submission to CRAFT contests.
  • We strongly discourage simultaneous submissions in conjunction with editorial feedback. If your piece is already under review by our team and you withdraw it, we will not be able to offer a refund. If you withdraw your piece before we have begun feedback, we will be happy to let you substitute another piece of equal length.
  • We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.
  • Additionally, we do not tolerate discrimination in the writing we consider for publication. Work we find discriminatory on any of the bases stated here will be declined without complete review (you will be refunded, less fees).

Editorial Feedback Team:

JOANNA ACEVEDO (she/they) is the Pushcart-nominated author of the poetry collection The Pathophysiology of Longing (Black Centipede Press, 2020) and the short story collection Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021). Her work has been seen across the web and in print, including or forthcoming in Hobart Pulp, The Rumpus, and The Masters Review. She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021 and is supported by Creatives Rebuild New York: Guaranteed Income for Artists. Find her on Twitter at @jo_avocado.

YAEL VALENCIA ALDANA (she/her/hers) is a writer and editor living in South Florida. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. She is a Best of the Net nominee, and her work has appeared or is upcoming in Chapter House Journal, Typehouse, Slag Glass City, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a memoir. Find her on Twitter @Yaelwrites71.

MELISSA BENTON BARKER is the flash fiction section editor at CRAFT. A graduate of the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles, her writing appears in Longleaf Review, Moon City Review, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Best Small Fictions 2021. She has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

ALYSE BURNSIDE is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Believer, and elsewhere. She’s working on a book.

A. J. BERMUDEZ is the author of Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, Chicago Quarterly, Boulevard, Story, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Diverse Voices Award, the PAGE Award, and the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. Find her on Twitter @AmandaJBermudez.

HENRY ELIZABETH CHRISTOPHER is a trans writer from Akron, Ohio. His writing has been published in journals such as The Threepenny Review, Little Patuxent Review, Gordon Square Review, Delay Fiction, HASH, Gigantic Sequins, Eastern Iowa Review and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. His first novel, No One Dies in Palmyra Ohio, is forthcoming in October 2022 with What Books Press. He’s currently working toward his Master of Fine Arts in prose at the University of Washington in Seattle.

KYLE COCHRUN (he/him) is a writer living in Seattle, Washington. He is a contributing writer for PopMatters, where he writes features, interviews, and album reviews. His essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in The Akron Anthology, Watershed Review, Echo, and CRAFT. He received an MFA in creative writing from the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts graduate program.

DEIRDRE DANKLIN’s flash fiction chapbook, How to Start a Coven, is forthcoming from Variant Lit, and her novella, Catastrophe, is available now wherever books are sold. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and two cats.

ALEXA DORAN recently completed her PhD in poetry at Florida State University. Her full-length collection DM Me, Mother Darling won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was published in April 2021 (Bauhan). She is also the author of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). Look for work from Doran in recent or upcoming issues of Pleiades, Witness, Salt Hill Journal, and Gigantic Sequins, among others.

BRANDON DUDLEY is the  author of Hazards of Nature: Stories, selected by Sigrid Nunez as the winner of the 2020 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Chapbook Contest. His writing, interviews, and criticism have appeared in New South, The Millions, The Forge, Fiction Writers Review, North by Northeast 2, and others. He holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. He lives in Maine with his wife and two sons. Find him on Twitter @brandondudley8.

PAIGE PATTERSON DUFF is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She’s been named a finalist in The Sewanee Review’s fiction contest. With two decades of professional writing and editing experience, she currently reads both fiction and creative nonfiction for CRAFT. Born and raised in Atlanta, she lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. She’s currently working on a novel-in-stories.

ROSS FEELER’s fiction has appeared in Electric Literature‘s “Recommended Reading,” The Common, New South, Potomac Review, Story | Houston, Hypertext, and others. His novel-in-progress received the Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar and was a finalist for James Jones First Novel Award. He teaches English at Texas State University.

B. B. GARIN is a writer living in Buffalo, New York. Her echapbook, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. She is a recipient of the 2020 Sara Patton Fiction Stipend from The Writer’s Hotel. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Swamp Ape Review, freeze frame fiction, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, Inklette, and more. She is currently a prose reader and blog contributor for The Masters Review. She continues to improve her craft at GrubStreet Writing Center, where she has developed several short fiction pieces, as well as two novels.

SUZANNE GROVE currently serves as both the associate editor and short fiction section editor for CRAFT. Her fiction and poetry appear or are forthcoming in The Adirondack Review, Barren Magazine, The Carolina Quarterly, No Tokens, Okay Donkey, The Penn Review, Porter House Review, Raleigh Review, X-R-A-Y, No Contact, and elsewhere. She has also received honorable mention for her fiction appearing on Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s Work in Progress website.

COURTNEY HARLER (she/her) is a freelance writer, editor, and educator based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe (2017) and an MA in English (Literature) from Eastern Washington University (2013). Courtney is currently editor in chief of CRAFT, and has read and written for UNT’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize, The Masters Review, Funicular Magazine, Reflex Fiction, and Chicago Literati in recent years. She also hosts the literary podcast PWN’s Debut Review, as well as teaches and edits for Project Write Now, a nonprofit writing studio in New Jersey. For her creative work, Courtney has been honored by support from Key West Literary Seminar, Writing By Writers, Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Nevada Arts Council. Courtney’s work has been published in multiple genres in literary magazines around the world. Find her on Twitter @CourtneyHarler1.

KATELYN KEATING (she/her) was the editor in chief of CRAFT from 2018 to 2021 and now serves as editor at large. She was a 2017 fellow of the LA Review of Books Publishing Workshop and has been on their faculty since 2018, overseeing PubLab, leading the magazine track as a program manager, and serving as the publisher coordinator for LITLIT: The Little Literary Fair. She is a production manager with Berrett-Koehler Publishers, and was the production and operations manager at Prospect Park Books until it left California in 2021. Her essays appear in Crab Orchard Review, Flyway, Lunch Ticket, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. Katelyn has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles, where she worked for two years on Lunch Ticket, serving as editor in chief for issues 11 and 12. Find her on Twitter @katelyn_keating.

VAL M. MATHEWS is a big-hearted, fun-loving editor at The Wild Rose Press, a small traditional publishing house in New York. She also teaches courses in editing for Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and for the Editorial Freelancers Association in New York City. She earned an MA in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University and a BFA from the University of Georgia. Fun fact about Val: She’s been an FAA-certified flight instructor for over twenty-five years, and in the past, she flew Lear jets for a living.

GABRIEL MOSELEY is a writer and editor from Seattle, Washington. His work has appeared in The Masters Review, Nordic Kultur, Stratus, and Alaska Airlines’ Alaska Beyond Magazine. He received an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and certificates in both editing and literary fiction from the University of Washington. He has been a finalist for the Made at Hugo House Writing Fellowship, LitMag’s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction, and the Haleakalā National Park Residency. He is a guest editor for The Masters Review. 

JESSE MOTTE is an MFA candidate for fiction at the University of South Carolina. He is currently a reader for Witness, the cofiction editor at Yemassee Journal, and a fiction editor at word west. He’s been reading for literary magazines for four years and is currently an editorial assistant for fiction at CRAFT.

SAM RISAK is the section editor for interviews and essays at CRAFT as well as a reader/reviewer for TAB: The Journal in Poetry & Poetics. Currently based in Tampa, Florida, she received an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English at Chapman University. She has work published or forthcoming in Writer’s Digest, Literary Hub, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Terrain.org, Los Angeles Review of Books, Entropy, Barrelhouse, and Crab Orchard Review. Find her on Twitter @sam_risak.

AUSTIN ROSS‘s fiction and essays have been or will soon be featured at Literary Hub, Hobart, Necessary Fiction, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. He is an alumni of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and has worked as a professional editor for the past seven years, working with both fiction and nonfiction and a wide variety of authors, editors, ghostwriters, and freelancers, including multiple New York Times bestsellers. He lives near Washington, DC, with his wife and children. Find him on Twitter @AustinTRoss.

GAGE SAYLOR is the assistant director of creative writing at Oklahoma State University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Passages North, Tampa Review, Crab Creek Review, Iron Horse, and elsewhere. He has won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize at Nimrod and is a previous semifinalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize at North American Review. He received his MFA at McNeese State University, where he was awarded the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction.

VANDANA SEHRAWAT holds a creative writing MFA from Boston University, where she was also a teaching fellow, and an MA from the University of East Anglia, UK, where she was awarded the South Asian Bursary and her novel dissertation was shortlisted for the Curtis Brown Prize. Vandana’s fiction has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review #32. She was a finalist for the recent Mslexia Novel Competition and the Iowa Review Short Story Award 2018, and longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2020. She reads fiction for CRAFT. Find her on Twitter @SehrawatVandana.

CHLOE CHUN SEIM is a writer living in Lawrence, Kansas. Her work has appeared in LitMag, McNeese Review, Hobart, Potomac Review, and Fractured Lit, among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and her short story collection, CHURN, was named a finalist for the 2020 St. Lawrence Book Award and 2021 Hudson Prize. She is the winner of the 2021 Anton Chekov Flash Fiction Award from LitMag. She also serves as the editor in chief of Snarl. Find her on Twitter @Chloe_Chun.

DAVID K. SLAY completed a two-year program of short story writing workshops in the University of California, Los Angeles, Writers’ Program. His work can be found in a number of diverse literary journals, including Gold Man Review, Calliope, ImageOutWrite, wards, The Magnolia Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, and others. Nonfiction craft articles are in CRAFT and Submittable’s Content for Creatives. He has been a submissions reader for CRAFT since 2019 and has served as a guest editor for Vestal Review. He lives in Seal Beach, California.