Welcome to the October issue of the Okay Donkey newsletter (which still doesn’t have a proper name — maybe we’ll prioritize that in 2026, which is rapidly approaching)! First things first: if you’re clicked to read this from social media, or found it some other way, please consider subscribing!

This month, we’re excited to bring you a missive from Lead Fiction Reader Rina Palumbo on the pros, cons, and results of taking on the “100 rejections in one year” challenge. It’s about rejection, yes, but would you believe it’s also about…acceptances? And more?!

We’re also proud to share our eight Best of the Net nominees, plus our pick for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. With the four pieces we published in September and two from alums we’re shouting out at the end of this issue, that’s fifteen works linked here to (re)visit from our archive.

Enjoy this month’s issue!

🫏 OKD Updates

Our Best of the Net nominations dropped last month! Congratulations to…

• Julia Rose Greider, “A Reading List for the End of the World” (fiction)

• Nicola Koh, “I’ve Been Getting Letters from Santa for Twenty Years and All I’ve Learned Is He’s an Asshole” (fiction)

• ALUKAH, “FLORIDA” (poetry)

• Karan Chambers, “I have an existential crisis on realizing my reading list is finite” (poetry)

• Dani Janae, “Bright Invitations” (poetry)

• Gabe Montesanti, “The Signs” (poetry)

• Shagufta Mulla, “When I Was a Bearskin Rug” (poetry)

• Cassandra Whitaker, “Leaving the Wedding in a Fever” (poetry)

And a special shoutout to Amanda Parrack, whose story “I Found a Stone Under My Skin” is OKD’s nomination for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

🌟 100 Rejections a Year: Where to Start?

by Rina Palumbo, OKD Lead Fiction Reader

A few years back, I read an article about a submission challenge that involves aiming for 100 rejections a year. The strategy behind this approach is to educate yourself about the general landscape of literary journals, to establish a practice of sending out your work regularly, and, most importantly, to normalize rejection as part of being a writer.

I decided to accept the challenge. My problems started almost immediately. Part of the challenge is to “tier” your submissions. That is, send your work first to your top five journals, wait to hear back, then the next five, wait, then the final five. Generally, 15 rejections is a strong signal that you have more to work on, OR, and often related, you are submitting to the wrong journals, either because of what you are writing or how you are writing it. And, sure enough, I got rejected a lot.

That’s because the reality of finding your “tiers” is complicated. First, there are thousands of journals. Looking at platforms like Chill Subs, Duotrope, Poets & Writers, and NewPages, which have databases of journals and magazines, is overwhelming. Going on social media on any given day will net you even more journals looking for submissions. Second, how do you decide which journals are more desirable so that you can set up your tiers? There are lists (e.g. Erika Krouse, Clifford Garstang, Brecht de Poortere), each ranking literary journals using criteria such as acceptance rates, awards won, etc. These were great because I started getting a general sense (through seeing journals ranked in almost the same way) of places I wanted to be published in, but I still didn’t have a strong sense of where my work fit.

So, I took the advice on many journals' submission pages: if you want to know what we publish, read our journal. I read widely and made note of the ones that were a good fit for my work, as well as those I aspired to be published in someday. More importantly, I discovered some fantastic writers, and by researching them, I found other journals where they had work published. My next step was to check these journal titles out on Chill Subs and Duotrope. Chill Subs has a section under each listing that provides a list of comparable journals. Duotrope includes information not only on places that have had the same submitters, but also on where those submitters received acceptances. I used this strategy to build up my own list of tiers. Another change I made (given that not all the journals in my tiers are open at the same time) was to not limit myself to five. Instead, I focused on the work and submitted it to the places that felt right for that given piece at that time. In this last regard, submitting flash is closer to submitting poetry.

For what it’s worth, I ended up with 98 rejections that year, but also 19 acceptances, and, perhaps most importantly, an established routine for submitting my work. And yes, rejection still sucks, but that's Okay.

📚 September at OKD

• “All the Friends I Could Have Made are Having Fun Without Me,” flash fiction by Mackenzie McGee

• “Pete the Cat: All Grown Up & Alone In His Car,” poetry by Emily Dressler

• “13.1 Septillion Pounds,” flash fiction by Emily Rinkema

• “Hot-Desking,” poetry by Maxwell Minckler

🔎 Check Us Out

We love when past contributors keep us updated on their lives! If your work has ever appeared in OKD, reach out and tell us about your new book, project, album, etc. We’ll give you a shoutout on our socials and here in the newsletter.

• Kristina Ten’s short story collection Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine is out October 7. (OKD: “Call It My Signature Kill,” June 2020)

• Audrey Hall was nominated for Best of the Net for “Submersion,” published in Dishsoap Quarterly. (OKD: “Old Man in the Kitchen,” March 2022)

• OKD Social Media Manager Christine Salek has a poem called “#latergram” out with fifth wheel press.

• OKD Fiction Reader Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin is leading a virtual generative writing workshop called “what are you so afraid of?: the poetics of turning inward toward fear” on October 19. (Course description/payment info)

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