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Glass Mountain Journal / Shards Literary Magazine

Siwyenbast

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While this is my personal account, I'm currently in a practicum class that helps run these two markets (we treat them as one, since Shards is the online arm of Glass Mountain). To my surprise, I hadn't seen a thread on us yet, so here it is.

*Puts on Assistant Editor hat* Glass Mountain and Shards are the undergraduate-run literary magazines (GM in print, Shards online) from the University of Houston. We focus on emerging writers and giving them a voice in the community with their work. We are not strictly literary, as we also accept pieces that are genre, poetry, reviews and interviews, nonfiction, and art. Glass Mountain publishes once a semester for print, whereas Shards publishes every other month. Besides our submission guidelines for pieces, our only other requirement is that the author/artist of the piece not have a MFA, PhD or attended such level of creative work. Those that have would be better suited to submitting to Gulf Coast, University of Houston's graduate-run magazine. We are a non-paying market.

If you want to learn more about us and possibly submit, the website is https://www.glassmountainmag.com/

If this is in the wrong area, mods, please feel free to move it. *hat off*

Also, if you go to the Shards staff page, I'm on the left in the picture for this year's group (me when I actually am not in my pajamas, like my profile pic :p ).

So, any questions/concerns/quippage about this band of undergrad publishers who based their market name off a Donald Barthleme piece? If I don't know it, I can forward it to our upper editors and/or our faculty advisor. Also, I'm barred from submitting here until after I leave the team. We're also pretty active in the local writing community and have several events throughout the year.

*goes off to do homework*
 

eqb

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Just to be clear, Glass Mountain requires authors to buy copies of the magazine in order to submit, while Shards does not, but neither pays anything if the story is accepted. Is that correct?
 

novicewriter

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Just to be clear, Glass Mountain requires authors to buy copies of the magazine in order to submit, while Shards does not, but neither pays anything if the story is accepted. Is that correct?

I'm confused where you read that. Maybe I've missed it, somewhere, but I read their submission guidelines, including their Submittable page, and didn't come across anything that said submitters would be required to buy copies of the magazine in order to submit. From what I read, their Submittable site allows others to either buy copies if they want to or separately submit without a fee.

What I read seemed to let submitters know that, if their work isn't published by Shards, online (where it'd be able to be viewed by others: friends, family, etc. for free), and is published in print by Glass Mountain, they'd have to buy a copy if they want others to see their work. It didn't sound mandatory to me, only a suggestion.
 
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Siwyenbast

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Novice has the right of it here. We don't require authors to buy copies of the print magazine. If people do buy it though, those funds go right back into the production of the magazine. It is a non-paying market, so the publication credit is what you get if the piece is accepted.

Also, if you submit only to Shards, you're just submitting to it and not GM. You would have to simultaneously submit to both if you wanted to be considered for both. The teams do communicate, though, and sometimes a piece will be tossed at the other side of the room, as it were. That's up to the upper editors, though. I'm just one of the assistant editors that reads the fiction submissions and argues for the ones I think are publishable. In fact, we just had our final slush meeting for the next issue for Shards tonight.
 

eqb

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It was from this page:

There are a few differences to consider when choosing to submit to our print magazine, Glass Mountain, or our online magazine, Shards. The main difference between the two is response time; if you prefer a quicker response, Shards publishes a new issue every two months, while Glass Mountain publishes once in the spring and once in the fall. Volumes of Glass Mountain must be purchased if you'd like to share your work with others, while issues of Shards will remain available online.

It's not clear to me what they mean by that, given this appears on the submissions page.
 

zmethos

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Yeah, it's not the best wording, but it just means the stories won't be online anywhere, so if you want friends and family to read your (presumably selected) work, you or they will have to buy physical copies of the magazine.
 

eqb

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Yeah, it's not the best wording, but it just means the stories won't be online anywhere, so if you want friends and family to read your (presumably selected) work, you or they will have to buy physical copies of the magazine.

Ah, okay. Clearly I needed more coffee. :)