slush pile [n]

a pile of manuscripts that have been sent by writers to a publisher and that will probably not be published.

ABOUT

SLUSH PILE MAGAZINE publishes remarkable pieces of literary fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and whatever else suits our mood.

Before the magazine was an actual slush pile. Specifically, the enormous piles of unsolicited submissions that (in the days before Submittable) cluttered the bookshelves, baskets, and desktops of Harvard Review. These submissions captured the heart and imagination of M. Rachel Thomas, then a reader and editorial assistant at Harvard Review. Many of these submissions were very bad. Many of them were promising. A handful were superb. But even these weren’t guaranteed a place in Harvard Review, which—then, as now—could only accept a fraction of the submissions it received.

So Thomas created this magazine. Her idea was to make more room for the writing she loved—in particular, the pieces that needed more work than bigger publications would likely be willing to put into them. She didn’t (of course) poach any of Harvard Review’s submissions. But (with the blessing of Harvard Review editor Christina Thompson) she did reach out to many of the authors whose work she loved. The first issue of Slush Pile Magazine was published in April 2009.

Slush Pile Magazine owes a huge debt of gratitude to Christina Thompson, for more than a decade’s worth of excellent advice and encouragement.

SUBMIT

Slush Pile Magazine isn’t currently accepting submissions. We’ll update this page when we return from hiatus.

CONTACT

To contact M. Rachel Thomas, ask questions, or comment about anything Slush Pile Magazine related, please direct correspondences to: editors [at] slushpilemag.com

US

M. RACHEL THOMAS, EDITOR, is the founder of Editorial House, the former managing editor and current senior reader of fiction at Harvard Review, and former fiction editor of DigBoston. Her writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, Harvard Review, The Adirondack Review, Redivider,  The Millions, and elsewhere. By all means look her up on Facebook: FB/onesmartnut & FB/slushpilemag   or  Twitter @slushpilemag.

MARION BRIGHT, POETRY EDITOR, is a poetry admirer and fiction writer. She received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been awarded writing fellowships from the University of Iowa and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She is a native Kentuckian, who lives in Los Angeles. 

SARA PETRAS, VISUAL ARTS EDITOR, received her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, Post-Bacc from Brandeis University and BA from University of New Hampshire with a focus in Painting. Her particular interest in Contemporary Art clarified during her tenure as Gallery Manager at Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston. She is the recipient of a George Nick Foundation award for Painting and an Artist Residency Grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Fountation of Taos, NM. Her work reflects her obsession with color and love of formal composition.

AYESHA HARRUNA ATTAH,  CONTRIBUTING  EDITOR, is a Ghanaian writer and  the author of three novels: Harmattan Rain (Per ANKH), nominated for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2010; Saturday's Shadows (World Editions), shortlisted for the 2013 Kwani? Manuscript Project, and The Hundred Wells of Salaga (Cassava Republic Press). Educated at Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and NYU, Attah was a 2014 Africa Centre Artists in Residency Award Laureate and Instituto Sacatar Fellow. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Asymptote Magazine, and the Caine Prize Writers’ 2010 Anthology. She was awarded the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for nonfiction. She currently lives in Senegal.

BRIAN BROOME, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, is a writer and K. Leroy Irvis Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been published in Creative Nonfiction,The Guardian, and Hippocampus among others. You can read more at brianbroome.com.

LELAH SIMON, SENIOR READER, is a musician and writer living in Los Angeles. She’s interested in the unique ways each medium helps people understand themselves and express what it is to be human. She was a PEN Emerging Voices finalist for 2016, and is currently working on a collection of personal essays about sex, love, and music. By day, she works in music publishing. By night, she plays bass all over Los Angeles, and meets up with other writers to co-work and workshop.

NOTE

The ideas, opinions, and imaginative output of our contributors are not necessarily shared by Slush Pile Magazine   and its staff. In event that you find something on our website highly offensive, please let us know and we'll see what we can do about it.

Also, we were never able to correctly identify the origins of the lady with the stack of papers, a modified version of which we use as our logo. If the original design is yours, please let us know so that we can give you credit for your work.