Hooray for Rosebud!

I have often lamented here about the demise of magazine fiction. Some of it was romance, some of it sci-fi, and some of it literary. I remember waiting for Redbook to come in the mail, waiting for the short stories but also a novel. It was in the pages of Redbook that I first read Kate Chopin’s classic The Awakening. You can still find pleasant short fiction on a regular basis in St. Anthony’s Messenger and in the Saturday Evening Post.

Essays and memoirs have also disappeared. I used to buy Woman’s Day, Traditional Home, Country Living, and a few other decorating magazines just to get the essay. When my magazines came in the mail or I retrieved one from the grocery bag, I started reading at the back because that is where you would find an end piece, a short essay or personal thoughts. You can still find an essay in Southern Living and in Victoria magazine. Most other publications have a filler page or a full page photo, nice but cuts out markets for writers and pleasurable reads for booklovers.


The literary journals are about all that is left for printing short fiction. I have begun to seek them out, and I have found some too experimental for me. Others deal in fantasy or shocking stories. I am looking for simple, heart rendering stories that captivate my imagination for a short spell, for an escape but not to a weird world. Right now I am sampling all the journals I can find. I have submitted to a few and had a success here and there. I recently submitted to Rosebud even without being able to find a sample copy in any local book store.


I was pleasantly shocked when editor Rod Clark called me on a November evening and said he would like to use the story I had submitted to him. He wanted to use it in the winter issue for December. I had submitted a short piece that I had created for blogger Donna Volkenannt’s (http://donnasbookpub.blogspot.com) writing contest several months earlier. I decided to go ahead and subscribe to this publication. Well, the issue was late getting out, and I began to worry that another publication was facing termination. I shouldn’t have worried because Rosebud is going strong after a seventeen year run.


So Saturday a lovely package of contributor copies and my own subscription arrived in the mailbox. I don’t need to tell you I was thrilled. But as I have continued to read the issue, I was glad I had not seen the publication first or I would not have had the courage to submit. My story Blood Kin sits among a chapter of Aeronwy Thomas’s memoir about her father Dylan Thomas, poetry by Lui Xiaobo who won a 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, and a chapter from 2009 Leapfrog Prize winner Billie Girl by Vicki Weaver among others.


Rosebud also has contests. Here is the link for their William Stafford Poetry Contest that is open until July. http://www.rsbd.net/NEW/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=89&Itemid=89. The magazine includes WORDZ where an interesting word is spotlighted. One in this issue is Judder: to vibrate with intensity. I was juddering when I saw my byline in this magazine!

Rosebud carries a subtitle that says The Magazine For People Who Enjoy Good Writing. I can recommend a subscription to Rosebud for your mailbox. So do you read literary journals? Can you recommend some favorites for readers?