Welcome to Paper Dragon at Drexel!
Winter 2023 Issue Focuses on Friendship
What Good Writing Can Do
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the new Paper Dragon Editorial and Management team, run by the students of the Drexel low-residency MFA program. The talented and visionary writers Tori Chase and Seth Kazmar (cohort 2024) are settling in as the new co-Managing Editors.
One of our goals this year is to drive more awareness and engagement by having a regular newsletter. In the coming months, you can expect to be entertained and inspired by writing craft content, mini book reviews, and interviews with the talented authors that make the Drexel MFA possible.
Of course, we’d like to let you know that the next volume is coming up soon, and we are open for submissions! We will be sending out full guidelines on September 24, but until then, here are the basics:
Paper Dragon’s submission dates are September 24 to November 4
The theme of our Winter 2023 issue is Friendship
Fiction and Nonfiction: maximum word count 1,000 words
Poetry: Maximum word count 250 words
Art: Submissions may include up to 5 image files in .jpeg format with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and a minimum of 1,024 pixels on the longest side. Files should be no larger than 7MB.
All works must incorporate the theme of Friendship and be previously unpublished
Multiple works must be submitted separately
Paper Dragon is committed to publishing poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, and artwork that resonates with contemporary readers. We are committed to showcasing exciting and inclusive work across genres. Paper Dragon seeks work that challenges us to see the human experience in new and honest ways through both established and emerging voices.
The Editorial team is excited to read your short stories, essays, and poems. It’s your creative, thoughtful works that help PD publish a unique literary journal, and we thank you for your interest and support.
The students that run Paper Dragon are a varied bunch of writers. I might even call us an unlikely group. It’s a unique privilege to experience writing outside one’s own comfortable genre. I’ve found myself getting involved in genres – YA, romance, noir – that I wouldn’t have otherwise picked up.
But that’s what good writing can do. It can transcend the genres, tropes, and devices and speak to our experience of being human. There is nothing that reaches out – across boundaries cultural, political, societal, physical, psychological, and ideological – more powerfully than a well-told story. It’s always a treat for me personally to discover a new favorite author, and especially delightful when it’s in a previously unexplored genre.
And speaking of what we’re reading . . .
A current new favorite of mine is Drexel MFA’s own Ted Flanagan. His debut novel, Every Hidden Thing, published last October by Crooked Lane Books is the amped up thrill-ride I wasn’t expecting to go on during this hot, hot summer. It’s a noir novel that really lives up to the genre: crooked cops, bribery, murder, dirty politicians, and a tormented Worcester medic caught in the middle. Thanks to Flanagan’s immersive and sensory writing style, the book is filled with emotion, intrigue and positively reeks of the city. And this brings me back to my earlier point about a well-told story: That it is a genre novel is merely a technicality, a means of classifying a work within the publishing world. It’s the vibrant writing and propulsive storytelling – not to mention the characters I love to love, as well as the ones I’m fascinating by hating – that keeps me turning the pages (and hoping to find a teaser chapter for Flanagan’s next novel, tucked away at the end).
Submissions for volume six open on September 24, and we do ask that you review our guidelines carefully before you submit. Stay tuned for our next mailing, where we’ll send those out to you in full. We’re excited to get to work, so we hope you’ll use the next few weeks to polish your works and send them off so our readers and editors can dive right in.
From my keyboard to yours, I wish you the very best of luck and many happy hours of writing.
Best regards,
Eleanor Keisman
Newsletter director
Before you go . . .
We're incredibly proud of Volume 5, our largest and most diverse publication to date. Many thanks go to the incredible writers for all their submissions, the editorial staff who read and curated the selections, and to the Drexel Publishing Group for making it possible.
Lastly, a little news…
Simon and Schuster recently sold to an equity firm for $1.62 billion. This could be good for authors, but bad for employees.
Ann Garvin, whom we are lucky enough to have as a professor in our MFA program, has just published her fifth novel There’s No Coming Back from This. It’s a delightfully witty read about a woman on the edge, and the lengths she’ll go to keep her family afloat. An endearing, poignant, and relatable story with a biting sense of humor, Garvin explores the ways in which a person makes new discoveries about themselves, even in the most unexpected of situations. We have a short interview with her appearing in our next newsletter, so stay tuned.
Once again – submissions for Volume Six open on September 24th!