Rejections: 5/4 - 5/12

 [Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.]

 Baubles From Bones rejected "Lessons Learned from a Green Meadow" on 5/4:

 Thank you so much for submitting your story, "Lessons Learned from a Green Meadow," to Baubles From Bones, and for your patience in waiting to hear from us. After much consideration, we've unfortunately decided not to move forward with it. 

We appreciate having the chance to read your work and wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere. 

Many thanks, 

Elyse Leskovic, Editor 

Baubles From Bones

baublesfrombones.com

The Iowa Review rejected "Learning The Passion and Control Twist" on 5/8.

Thank you for allowing us to consider your submission, and for your patience as you waited for our response. Though this work hasn't found a home with The Iowa Review, we consider it a privilege that you thought of us and regret that the volume of submissions precludes a more personal reply.   

Sincerely,

The Editors | The Iowa Review

Broad Ripple Review rejected “After Making Landfall” on 5/11 with a review:

Thank you for submitting “After Making Landfall” to Broad Ripple Review. We appreciated the opportunity to spend time with the piece.

While we are not moving forward with the story for publication, there is a great deal here that feels thoughtful, emotionally ambitious, and intellectually engaged with questions of vocation, identity, longing, and artistic self-conception. The story is clearly interested in what happens after arrival, after ambition has partially been fulfilled, after the dream one has organized a life around finally becomes materially real yet emotionally unstable. That central tension gives the piece much of its emotional and philosophical energy, and I admired the seriousness with which the story approaches questions about art, passion, and selfhood.

One of the strongest aspects of the piece is its voice. The second-person narration creates an immediate intimacy with Gina’s consciousness while also allowing the story to dramatize a kind of self-interrogation. There is something compelling about the way the narrative voice both comforts and indicts her at the same time. The oscillation between confidence and self-doubt feels psychologically convincing, especially in the early sections where Gina reflects on family expectations, artistic ambition, and the ways external validation becomes entangled with identity. The opening pages in particular establish a strong emotional and thematic framework very quickly.

I also appreciated how effectively the story situates Gina within overlapping cultural and familial pressures. The details about her Italian American upbringing, the family’s reverence for engineering over literature, and the complicated relationship between ethnic pride and artistic aspiration all feel specific and lived-in. The references to Calvino, Dante, Eco, and di Lampedusa work because they reveal not only Gina’s literary consciousness but also the particular rhetorical strategies she learned to use in order to justify herself to her family. The story consistently understands how artistic identity is shaped not just internally but socially and culturally.

The sections involving Luke and Kathy are also emotionally textured in interesting ways. The dynamic among Gina, Luke, and Kathy creates a subtle triangulation between ambition, compromise, longing, and artistic abandonment. Kathy’s history as a musician gives the later conversations surprising emotional weight, particularly because Gina gradually realizes she has misunderstood Kathy entirely. The exchange about music “stopping making sense” feels especially important to the story’s deeper concerns about vocation and surrender.

I think the story is often strongest when it trusts those interpersonal moments and allows emotional revelation to emerge organically through conversation and tension rather than through explanation or philosophical framing. There are several scenes, especially in the bar sequence, where the emotional undercurrents become vivid and compelling precisely because the characters are not fully articulating what they mean. Kathy and Luke’s unresolved emotional circuitry is palpable there, and Gina’s growing awareness of it creates real dramatic tension.

As I read, though, I found myself wanting slightly more modulation between the story’s reflective/philosophical register and its dramatized scenes. Gina’s consciousness is intellectually active almost continuously, and while that interiority is central to the piece, there were moments where the density of abstraction and literary reflection began to outpace the emotional immediacy of the scene itself. The story often moves quickly from lived moment into interpretation, mythic framing, or philosophical commentary, which can occasionally flatten dramatic momentum. I found myself most engaged when the story lingered in concrete interaction before stepping outward into larger conceptual territory.

Related to this, I wondered whether the Odysseus and Macbeth invocations might benefit from slightly more restraint or integration. The literary allusions clearly matter to Gina’s consciousness and thematic framework, but there were moments where they began to feel somewhat declarative rather than fully embodied within the dramatic movement of the story. I found myself curious what might happen if some of those mythic and literary parallels were allowed to remain a bit more submerged beneath the surface of the narrative rather than explicitly foregrounded. The story already contains the emotional architecture to support those resonances without always needing to name them directly.

I also think there may be opportunities to sharpen Gina’s emotional arc more distinctly across the story’s final movement. Her realization at the bar and subsequent return to writing are emotionally legible, but I occasionally wanted a slightly firmer sense of transformation between her earlier feelings of fraudulence and the concluding embrace of artistic creation. The final pages clearly aim toward affirmation and creative rebirth, and there is something moving in that gesture, but I found myself wanting just a bit more emotional specificity in how Gina arrives there internally. In some places, the thematic conclusions seemed to arrive slightly ahead of the emotional process itself.

At the same time, the story’s sincerity is one of its greatest strengths. “After Making Landfall” is unafraid to engage directly with artistic yearning, self-doubt, compromise, and the emotional costs of vocation. That kind of earnest engagement can be difficult to pull off without collapsing into sentimentality or cynicism, and I admired the story’s willingness to remain emotionally open throughout. There is a genuine affection here for artists, strivers, and people who continue wrestling with creative identity long after the romance of ambition has faded.

What stayed with me most was the story’s understanding that artistic fulfillment is not a clean arrival point but an ongoing negotiation between ego, insecurity, longing, work, and love. Gina’s realization that creation itself matters more than external validation feels emotionally honest, particularly because the story never entirely resolves her uncertainty. That lingering instability gives the ending much of its resonance.

Thank you again for sharing the work with us. We would absolutely be happy to see future work from you.

Warmly,

Kelly Schoenegge
Editor, Broad Ripple Review

"Agnes" was rejected byFlying Island Journal on 5/12:

On behalf of the Flying Island Journal editorial team, I thank you for the chance to review "Agnes." Although there is much about your story that is commendable (e.g. interesting plot, some lovely phrasing) resubmission has been recommended after additional workshopping. According to FIJ Fiction Editor Joan Hawkins, your story "need[s] to be tightened, and in places, motivation needs to be clarified" while it would "benefit from a supportive writers group critique all around." 

Since FIJ's submissions platformis transitioning from Submittable to Duotrope's Duosuma, I suggest that you consider resubmitting your story elsewhere if you prefer a quicker review turnaround time. 

Best of Luck!

Hiromi Yoshida

This is the only rejection that disturbs; albeit not for the rejection. It is how long for the rejection to land in my email. I have been tinkering with "Agnes" for around a decade. After submitting it to Flying Island Journal, I did another submission or two. I will need to check the versions to see if I attained the changes thought needed.

sch 5/12