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Manuscript Consultations

The editorial staff of Electric Literature is pleased to announce that we will be offering in-house manuscript consultations for winter ’23/’24! In this cycle, up to 30 writers may enroll to receive a comprehensive manuscript review, with detailed notes, and a video call with one of our talented EL editors. We are excited to extend this opportunity to a small group of writers of all experience levels.


Instructions, Requirements, and Details

  • Manuscript consultations are available for short fiction and essays up to 6,000 words.
  • We have 30 available slots for our winter ’23/’24 consultations, with 5 slots reserved for EL members at a 5% discount. The remaining 25 slots will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Learn more about becoming an EL member here.
  • Other than word count and formatting, there are no application requirements. However, in order to get the most out of your consultation, we strongly encourage you to revise your manuscript independently and submit as polished a draft as possible. 
  • We reserve the right to decline to review work for any reason, without explanation, at our editors’ discretion. If your manuscript is declined, a full refund will be issued.
  • Enrollment begins via our online store at 7 AM PST on December 1, 2023 and closes at midnight PST on December 31, 2023, or when the 30 slots have been filled. Please be advised that we expect this opportunity to sell out quickly, and we do not have sufficient staff capacity to offer additional slots at this time.
  • Once you have purchased a manuscript consultation, your slot is secured, and you have until January 31, 2024 to submit your manuscript.
  • Each manuscript will be assigned to an Electric Literature editor from the roster below. We are not able to accommodate requests to be paired with a specific editor.
  • Each writer will receive detailed marginal notes, and a 30-minute video or phone call with their editor.
  • Writers will receive written feedback by March 31, 2024, and consultation calls also take place before the end of March.
  • Writers who receive manuscript consultations will not be given preferential treatment for future submissions to Electric Literature, and are required to adhere to our regular submission guidelines. 
  • The fee for a manuscript consultation is $300.
  • After you purchase the manuscript consultation in our store, we will send you a private Submittable link to submit your manuscript.
  • To purchase a manuscript consultation as a gift, simply forward the confirmation email that contains the submission link to the gift recipient.
  • Manuscripts should be double-spaced in 12 pt Times New Roman font, and should include the author’s name and email address at the top. Please number your pages.
  • When you submit, please use the following format for naming your file: FICTION/NONFICTION_Title of Piece_Last Name.
  • In lieu of a cover letter and author bio, please include a paragraph or two about yourself to help us to get to know you, and your progress with the submitted work. Where are you in the revision process? Is there anything specific you would like help with? Please also note whether your submission is an essay or a short story.

Timeline

  • December 1, 2023: Enrollment opens
  • December 31, 2023: Enrollment closes
  • January 31, 2024: Manuscripts due
  • March 31, 2024: All consultations are complete

This opportunity will also serve as an important fundraiser for Electric Lit, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Proceeds will be used to pay staff salaries, writer fees, and help us continue to edit, nurture, and publish over 500 writers annually.

Please send any questions to editors@electricliterature.com.

Editor Bios

Kelly Luce, Editor of The Commuter

Kelly Luce has fifteen years of experience editing both fiction and nonfiction. Former positions include Editor-in-Chief of Bat City Review and editorial assistant for the O. Henry Prize anthology, where she read every short story published in 2014-15. She served as Electric Literature’s essays editor from 2015-2018. In 2018, she became Editor-in-Chief of The Commuter, where she acquired and edited Vanessa Chan’s “The Ugliest Babies in the World,” which later became the title story of Chan’s forthcoming story collection in a major two-book deal. Pieces Luce has edited have appeared in the New York Times, Best American Essays, Best American Fantasy, the O. Henry Prize anthology, Wigleaf Top 50, Best Small Fictions, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and won a SAJA Award. She has taught novel writing at Writing Workshops Dallas since 2018. 

Kelly is also the author of the story collection Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail and the novel Pull Me Under, a Book of the Month Club selection and one of Elle’s Best Books of 2017. A first-generation college student, she earned her BA from Northwestern University, an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, and was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her fiction has been supported by the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ucross Foundation, Art Omi, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and appeared in The Sun, Chicago Tribune, Salon, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, and other publications. She is the winner of the 2023 Wachtmeister Award from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

Halimah Marcus, Executive Director and Editor of Recommended Reading

Halimah Marcus has been a fiction editor since 2012, when she co-founded Electric Literature’s weekly fiction series, Recommended Reading. Over the last decade, she has worked with hundreds of writers, including A.M. Homes, Weike Wang, Sheila Heti, Helen DeWitt, James Hannaham, Laura Van Berg, Charles Yu, Etgar Keret, Ben Marcus, Maggie Shipstead, Nathan Harris, Catherine Lacey, as well as many other established and emerging writers. Stories she has edited have gone on to be included in Best American Stories, Best American Mysteries and Suspense, Best Australian Stories, the O. Henry Prize Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. 

Halimah is also the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an essay anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype, which was a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” pick. Her own short stories have appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, One Story, BOMB, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. Andrew Sean Greer selected her short story, “The Party Goers,” from the The Southampton Review as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2022. Halimah has an MFA from Brooklyn College, and lives in Kingston, New York.

Wynter K Miller, Managing Editor

Wynter K Miller began her editing career in academic publishing with a focus on narrative medicine and bioethics. She was a Senior Editor for the UC Davis Law Review, where she acquired and edited scholarly manuscripts for print publication. During her tenure, her own writing was recognized with four Witkin Awards for Best Essay, as well as an honorable mention for the Hopkin’s Award, awarded annually for publication of the most accomplished work. Her writing appears in Washington & Lee Law Review, Tennessee Law Review, and UC Davis Law Review, among others. Wynter also worked for several years developing and editing manuscripts now published in top-tier academic and medical journals, including the Annals of Internal Medicine and the American Journal of Bioethics. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in the Department of Bioethics where she edited manuscripts, provided developmental editing for works in progress, and published her own work. 

Wynter now applies her editorial expertise to fiction and creative nonfiction. She was the managing editor of Forum Literary Magazine and in that capacity worked with fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. Wynter has worked at Electric Literature since 2021 and previously served as a contributing editor, Interim Books Editor, and Associate Editor. She is currently Managing Editor, working primarily on Recommended Reading, where she acquires and edits fiction. Her editorial focus is on finding and elevating work submitted via open submission; recent pieces include “The Last Unmapped Places” by Rebecca Turkewitz, “The Oracle” by Joanna Pearson, and “Group Sex” by Elisa Faison. Wynter has a JD from the UC Davis School of Law and lives in San Francisco.

Denne Michele Norris, Editor-in-Chief

Denne Michele Norris was previously the fiction editor of Apogee Journal. In 2017, she acquired and edited “Eula,” the first published story in Deesha Philyaw’s award-winning collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, and “An Almanac of Bones”, the first published story in Dantiel W. Moniz’s acclaimed collection, Milk Blood Heat. In 2018 she became the Fiction Editor at The Rumpus, where multiple stories she edited were awarded the PEN Robert J. Dau Prize for debut short fiction, and she worked with writers such as Alejandro Varela, Hilary Leichter, Tyrese Coleman, Zak Salih, and Jade R. Jones. In 2021, Denne Michele was named Editor-in-Chief of Electric Literature, where she spearheaded Both/And, a groundbreaking series of fifteen essays written by trans and gender nonconforming writers of color, all edited by a trans woman of color. As Electric Literature’s editor in chief, Denne Michele is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication.

Denne Michele’s writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, VCCA, VONA, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Her short stories appear in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, and ZORA, and in the anthologies Everyday People: The Color of Life, published by Atria Books, and Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her short story, “Where Every Boy Is Known and Loved” was a finalist for the 2018 Best Small Fictions Prize. Her debut novel, When The Harvest Comes, is forthcoming from Random House.    

Katie Robinson, Associate Editor

Katie Robinson is currently the Associate Editor at Electric Literature. She began her tenure in 2021 as the Social Media Editor, but now primarily works on narrative nonfiction, acquiring and editing for both the Creative Nonfiction Program and EL’s cultural criticism section. Her editorial perspective is shaped by a career spanning the book industry: from publishing to bookselling to teaching to editing. In her previous roles, Katie worked for literary agencies Fletcher & Company and Trident Media Group, where she specialized in nonfiction and memoir. She also spent several years in the world of book buying, working as a bookseller, buying assistant, and event host at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. She received her MFA from Boston University in 2023, where she taught creative writing to undergraduates in her capacity as a Teaching Fellow.

Katie’s own writing has appeared in Grist, Autofocus, Prism Review, Hooligan Mag, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and excerpts of her novel-in-progress have been named Honorable Mentions in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open and CRAFT‘s First Chapters Contest. A beginning translator, Katie’s translation work from the Italian was the recipient of the 2023 Boston University Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. She currently lives in Brookline.

Meredith Talusan, Board Member and Contributing Editor

Meredith Talusan was the founding Executive Editor of them. at Condé Nast, where she edited both new and established writers like Alexander Chee, André Aciman, Amber Tamblyn, Michelle Tea, Bryan Washington, and Brandon Taylor. She has also been a contributing editor at Catapult and is a current contributing editor for Electric Literature. She teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence and has taught at Tin House Summer Workshop, Lambda Literary Retreat, and BANFF Centre for the Arts.