I’m getting absurd emails like this now! 

Tumblr now asks new users what they’re into and with one click the user can follow a tumblrs that Tumblr has tagged as fitting those interests. 

I’m a writing tumblr— Hello! 

I want to take this opportunity to not just say ‘Hi’, or to brag, but to tell you (and remind others of you) that Monkfish Jowls is open to submissions! 

We even pay! 

I started accepting submissions when the BP oil spill was happening in the Gulf. I was living in Singapore and I felt powerless about what was happening to the environment in the gulf. I donated money to the National Wildlife Fund, who was coordinating some of the animal rescue that was going on, but I didn’t want to feel like I was standing alone. Throwing money at something is so freaking abstract these days. You enter some numbers and it’s done. 

So I made it so that if you created art and I wanted to publish it, I would either pay you or donate that money to the NWF, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Water.org, or some other charity. 

Some people were deeply offended. “Why not just send money?” 

But it wasn’t about sending money, it was about finding community. 

And now that I have 20 times the number of followers as I did then, I am still interested in creating that or trying to find it. 

That’s why we launched We Were Emergent, an anthology of new writing by people between the ages of 18 & 25 that’s now accepting submissions. 

And that’s why Monkfish Jowls is still open to submissions and I’m still willing to pay out of my own pocket for your words, your pictures. I don’t accept everything I’m sent—I think I’ve rejected 50% of what I’ve gotten. But I love what I have taken. Like Kevin Hyde’s list of awkward statements. Grace Zimmer on her promiscuous daffodils. Caitlin Davis reporting a phone call. An email by E. Wurdle. J Wolfskim on being thrown out of time. What I’ve learned from Men’s Magazines by Ling Ma. KM responding to a post of mine. 

Be a part. Or just say hello sometime.