November 22, 2025

Baltimore Review News: Our five Best Small Fictions nominations were submitted yesterday, November 21, and I think that pretty much wraps up nominations for the year. In December, I’ll list our nominations in a blog post and mention that we also send copies of our annual print compilation to the Best American series editors. In the past, our contributors have received honors without being nominated by us, and that’s always a wonderful surprise.

Had a Zoom meeting with a student interested in an internship for the spring semester. Whether such work is for a course and academic credit or simply to learn more about how literary journals work (and how to improve one’s own chances of getting published), volunteering is something I highly recommend. If nothing else, you learn how decisions are made and may be a bit more understanding when you receive decline responses—and we all get them.

Interesting that a writer withdrew work today saying that they hadn’t been aware of our no-AI policy. To me, it’s so obvious that “creative” writing would exclude work written by non-human means, and our contract includes language about the writing being the writer’s original work. Nevertheless, I recently added a “no AI” mention to our Submission Guidelines page. I’m glad I did.

A little over a week until our submission deadline, November 30. Then we’ll have some serious catching up to do. We’ve averaged over 50 submissions per day since opening up on August 1.

On a personal note: My micro “Foolish” was nominated by Pithead Chapel for Best Microfiction, and I’m grateful. I think I should work on more micros next; they seem to be my sweet spot. Receiving my share of declines for some slightly longer work recently, but some include encouraging notes, and for that I’m grateful. I think I need to focus less on submitting and more on creating/revising now. Various generative workshops are helping with that. Mostly freebies—so why not? About to start one (Ask, Write, Repeat) right now.