Janelle Bassett’s debut story collection, Thanks for This Riot (University of Nebraska Press, September 2024), opens with a teenage girl visiting an arcade. Angry with her mother’s efforts to protect and control her, embarrassed about having less money than her friends, the girl tries go-kart racing, letting her feelings take over as she prepares to speed off course. “I simply gave myself full permission,” the girl says. Her rebellion is the first of many in Bassett’s funny and arch book, which features characters, mostly women—caretakers, counselors, retail workers, mothers, grandmothers—trying to resist the strictures of their lives. The stories, which contain many scenes of social awkwardness and misunderstanding, are comic and poignant. By the end of the book, when a character whose literalness has baffled those around her declares, “Life is so funny and yet so sad,” it rings true.
Janelle Bassett, the author of the debut story collection Thanks for This Riot. (Credit: Courtney Lee Miener)
When sending out the stories that would eventually become her collection, Bassett prioritized online magazines. “My main goal was for my friends and family to be able to read my stories,” she says. “Having them in a prestigious but inaccessible print journal made little sense.” Bassett also considered a story’s word count in deciding where to submit it, describing Thanks for This Riot as a “balance of longer, weightier stories with lighter, snack-sized ones.” She observes that online outlets often prefer pieces under two thousand words. So when she looked to place the slightly surreal “Prove It,” which is almost eight thousand words, she sent it to a spot she knew to be open to longer works: American Literary Review. The biannual, which is edited by graduate students at the University of North Texas, was established as a print journal in 1990 and went online in 2013. The editors curate poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and interviews that “speak to American place, culture, history, and future.” General submissions are open via Submittable until December 1.
One of Bassett’s shortest fictions appeared in Had. She thought the “funny, weird, pathetic tone” of her 883-word “Bulk Trash Is for Lovers” would be a good fit for the magazine; the editors cite “early, minimalist web journals” such as Elimae, McSweeney’s, and Eyeshot as their inspirations. The Had editors swiftly accepted Bassett’s flash piece. “I loved the pace of this publication,” she says. “Quick response, fast turnaround on edits, and the story was online with my skulls before I knew it.” By skulls, Bassett is referring to the image of one or more skulls the journal stamps above every poem or story—one of which it publishes nearly every day. Seeing the visual marker over one’s work in Had is a rite of passage the journal’s contributors call “getting your skull.” Had’s submission model is unusual; the editors “sporadically and spontaneously” open submissions for, on average, a few hours (the shortest call was thirty-seven seconds, the longest nearly 168 hours). The editors then aim to reply to all writers within a day. Submission periods are shared in advance via word of mouth or on Had’s account on X (formerly Twitter), @havehadhavehad.
As with Had, Bassett appreciated the online magazine Trampset for its speedy turnaround time. After writing “All I Need Are These Four Walls and Some Positive Feedback,” she wanted to share it right away. Since she had previously received positive rejections from Trampset, she submitted again, this time selecting the “quick response” option, through which writers can pay $6 to hear back on their piece within a week. Trampset, which is hosted on the platform Medium, publishes poetry and prose (with an emphasis on flash fiction and micro essays) on a rolling basis. General submissions are currently open without a fee; editors respond in one to three months. Not all of Bassett’s stories found homes as easily as her piece in Trampset.
She sent “Babies Don’t Keep,” a story about the “distressing childhood plight of being at the mercy of the adults around you,” to journals for three years with no luck. She eventually “took the hint,” cut four hundred words, and published the revision in X-R-A-Y. The journal’s editors publish a fiction or nonfiction piece nearly every day, noting they prefer stories of five hundred to twelve hundred words or three thousand to six thousand words. Bassett felt her story’s “menacing yet playful tone” would suit the online mag, which aspires to publish “uncomfortable, entertaining, and unforgettable prose that…sees through the skin and reveals something deeper.” Submissions are currently open via Submittable.
Bassett often homes in on the small transformations characters can experience in daily life. In “The Right Light,” the narrator feels an expanded sense of time while watching a woman pace in a park. Bassett placed this story in Okay Donkey, an online publication of poetry and fiction that favors “the odd, the off-kilter, and the just plain weird.” The editors write, “We like work that’s funny, that’s sad, and that’s both funny and sad at the same time.” Bassett praises the journal for its “consistently positive online presence” and promotion of its work. Okay Donkey usually publishes a piece every Friday, alternating between a poem and a piece of flash fiction. Submissions are open via Submittable at the beginning of each month until the editors reach their quota.
Dana Isokawa is a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine and the editor in chief of the Margins.
