GlassFire Magazine

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We’re on a quest.  A quest for nonfiction.

When we first envisioned GlassFire (back when we were planning on calling it Mishmash Magazine until we found out that name was already taken), we planned on having three sections: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.  Well, thanks to many talented writers, we’ve been able to publish some amazing poetry and fiction in the past year.  But when it comes to nonfiction, we’ve only received a handful of submissions.  Hence, our quest.

So what type of nonfiction do we want?  Well, like our fiction and poetry, we’re willing to read anything, although we’re mainly looking for creative nonfiction.  What’s the difference, you ask?  Nonfiction covers everything from memoirs to self-help books to travel guides.  We’re mainly looking for nonfiction stories: retellings of real-life events, travelogues, and even your thoughts on life, as long as they’re interesting and intriguing to our readers.  For a good example, check out this issue’s nonfiction piece, “Half Hearted” by Steve Howard.

Just beware when writing nonfiction that you don’t end up writing something that is more fiction.  The rule of thumb when writing about your personal events is to keep the events the same.  No one can perfectly recall what was said or done, which is where the “creative” part of creative nonfiction comes into play.  You can even get away with changing minor events as long as they don’t change what happened.  Names, including locations, can be changed to protect the innocent (or not so innocent, as the case often is!). 

On a completely different topic, we wanted to keep everyone updated on our ever-evolving editorial policies.  In the past few issues, you might have noticed that we’ve published a few more pieces than usual.  In the beginning, we planned each issue to have four poems, two or three short stories, and two creative nonfiction pieces.  This worked out very well in the beginning, but then we ran into a problem: we had too many good poems.

You wouldn’t think that would be a problem, but unfortunately, our budget per issue is pretty limited (and, in fact, we make no money off of GlassFire – it’s published with money from other projects).  However, since we’ve been short on nonfiction, we’ve been able to publish more poems and short stories. 

Basically, this means there’s no telling how much writing you’ll see in each issue!  We’re dedicated to publishing top quality writing, and we’ll try to make our budget jump through as many hoops as necessary to do that. 

We hope you all enjoy this issue of GlassFire!  It’s been a pleasure to read all of the submissions so far, and with every issue, we get more and more.  Keep them coming!

-Matt & Kristina