FAQ

I don’t know if I should submit my work.

Read the About and Submit sections. If you believe your work fits, please send it. If you’re unsure, send it. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re looking for until we find it.

Why don’t you use Submittable?

While Submittable may be free for writers, it costs hundreds to over a thousand dollars a year to utilize as a hosting platform for submissions. CounterCulturalist is a grassroots organization with no institutional backing and no financial prospects. The editor pays out of pocket to run the site and keep the domain name.

Do you have a print edition?

Not at present, though we hope to.

Does that mean you have issues?

Personally? Maybe. If you’re wondering whether submitted works are gathered and grouped into specific editions or installments, the answer is no. We publish on a rolling basis. This may change in the future, but currently CounterCulturalist is too new to be amassing the sort of submission volume necessary for putting together issues without huge delays.

The premise of your journal is [racist / sexist / ableist / ___ist] because [literature / merit / life / you] are inherently exclusionary due to [unconscious bias / historical marginalization / socialization / the fact that you’re a shitty person.]

Thanks for your feedback. Submit to any other literary journal in existence. They all share your opinion.

I want to publish something but don’t want my name attached. Can I submit anonymously?

Yes. You can also use a pen name. If your preference is to remain anonymous without a pen name, we would appreciate a more personalized moniker than just “anon” for the sake of making it clear to readers that you’re a real person rather than a creation of the editor. This could be as simple as “Anonymous Writer from the Midwest,” “Delivery Driver,” whatever you would like. If possible though, we would prefer you use your real name or a pen name in order to lend some degree of credibility to the site and your contribution.

Will publishing here grant me prestige?

Probably not.

Is CounterCulturalist right-wing? Is it left-wing?

No. The editor does not believe in political categories as a sort of ideological shorthand, because people begin to tailor their thoughts and positions to fit inside the label they identify with, and thus it becomes an identity-mediated affiliation instead of a philosophical one. There is nothing inherently wrong with identity. But preset political identity does tend to foment ego investment, and ego investment clouds thought outside of accepted boundaries because the risk to self concept becomes too great.

Political categories also act as a sort of interpersonal shorthand for sorting others. You can argue with their label instead of their position. The label becomes what it means to the arguer. This ends up leading to very little being considered on its own merit, but rather, on what it might reflect about a wider ideological position. There is a legitimate argument to be made that things connect—you can’t view one understanding as isolated from everything it stems from or might lead to. This is true, but it is deeply assumptive in a way that becomes obfuscatory and is often used as an excuse to disregard a point or position reflexively or conveniently. That is intellectually dishonest, on one hand, and actively damaging on the other.

How is it damaging? Imagine a person harmed by a medical procedure. The procedure is fraught with political tension. Every time the person brings it up, they are accused of being a political extremist. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. Regardless, what happened to them is real. This deserves to be recognized as legitimate harm no matter how inconvenient. Not just for their sake, but because society needs to reckon with the fact this harm exists. Or imagine a white person hurt by state violence. Everywhere they go, they encounter movements and articles about the importance of black lives in the context of police brutality. Maybe this is fine, but if they bring up white people, they are told most victims are black and to stop making it about themselves, when in reality, no one has ever bothered to make what they experienced about them at all.

There was no news article or social justice for either of these people. There is little public avenue to expression, because whatever they produce about their experience is doubted or viewed as illegitimate or distracting. Because their identity categories fall outside the bounds of accepted care, or their experience coincides with a political narrative and becomes consumed by it. This is part of what CounterCulturalist seeks to remedy.

We also welcome political thoughts and opinions. What is published here is evaluated on the basis of truth, not ideology. Truth is objective by nature, but there is obviously a subjective sense to what counts as truth. This is necessarily decided by the editor. That being said, a sincerely held belief, thought, perception, opinion, or experience that the editor does not share is absolutely likely to be published here, within reason and across political lines, as long as it is honest and true to the author, supported by the author, and genuinely heterodox in at least one aspect rather than conforming to the “ideological shorthand” mindset explained above.

That makes sense for the nonfiction section. But how does poetry fit into this?

How could it not? Poetry used to mean something.

Modern academic institutions produce poetry that believes it is clever to say nothing and pretend the lack of message is the message. If you don’t mean anything, you can never be found out. On the other hand, having any sort of perspective leak through beyond vague affirmations or easy cynicism is viewed as trite, obvious, or expository. “Good” poetry has an almost “vague-posting” quality, or tries to pretend seriousness through pretension and big words, or captures some flimsy snapshot of your grandfather’s arms and a dying bird, and ends on a simile that bears no relation whatsoever to the rest of the text. Then everyone nods and claps and fawns over the emperor’s new clothes.

Milton held a position and built a cosmology. His work was deeply human, yet constructed a scaffolding and expressed thought—expressed thought in progress. I am not asking my contributors to be Milton or my readers to expect it. He is useful as an example of how poetry doesn’t have to conform to modern conceits to be good. There is also something to be said for poetry that expresses without pretension. This too has been maligned and discounted, though in the opposite direction—as uncontrolled, messy, difficult. It’s almost as if publications want the appearance of messiness, a carefully constructed messiness, without any of the guts. Well, you aren’t alive without guts.

Poetry that is messy is uncomfortable because it shows us something in others we don’t always want to admit exists. And often, it reaches something in ourselves that is painful or difficult to touch. But writing has always existed to put words to something wordless. If you are using words to create wordlessness, what are you doing?

Who the fuck are you?

A writer with a very particular, painful, and strange life who has existed for a long time outside what anyone gives a shit about, and who came to develop certain understandings and values both experientially and from a long time spent thinking.

What are your credentials? Are you educated?

No.

You allow comments on what is published here. Why?

Mainly, we don’t think there’s any good reason lit journals should be a closed ecosystem. In fact, there are many reasons they shouldn’t be.

Closing them off protects institutions. If you never allow anyone to comment directly, you control the conversation. No criticism can be leveled, especially if, like mainstream journals, you have ties to the official avenues through which it could be leveled at all, such as reviewers or lit prizes. Ordinary people don’t and never will have those connections, which is intentional. This allows institutions to regulate what is considered good writing, what is literary, the standards of the time, and the opinions and thoughts that are or aren’t allowed to be addressed or expressed.

CounterCulturalist is not a mainstream publication. Even if we didn’t allow comments here, there would be nothing much we would be controlling regardless. But comments are more than a means of allowing criticism or shaping the established intellectual domain. They are also a means of interacting.

Literature is meant to be a conversation. Writing is by nature, in itself. Most people don’t write in a vacuum. They write to be known to themselves or others, and to have an effect on the world around them.

Readers in the modern age are largely overlooked. They are viewed as a sort of receptacle or passive recipient for a writers’ thoughts. This is the primary narcissism of the writer, and a narcissism people are taught to accept from a young age. Education is sitting at a desk receiving other people’s thoughts, reading books passively, maybe writing, but writing in the way you were told to, in the way the select writers the institution values have set out. Critical thinking and genuine creative and intellectual pursuit are claimed to be valued, but with little evidence.

Even beyond critical or intellectual engagement, there is a transference of meaning to be had that is not unidirectional. Readers take the world as seen by the writer and filter it through their own perception. If given the chance, they put it back out as something changed by their internal contact with it. They are a receiver and a creator, as we all are, and so perception gives birth to perception and human understanding transmits and develops. Language is a way to see the world from multiple perspectives at once. The writer should have the opportunity to be affected by what the reader produces in response. And multiple readers of the same text should have the opportunity to be affected by each other.

There is often no clean separation between writers and readers. Almost all writers read, and it’s possible a writer would want to comment on another writer’s work. Commenting also gives people who may not have the skill or ability to publish the opportunity to contribute publicly nonetheless. This reduces gatekeeping and prestige-chasing and allows people to engage and be valued.

You are very long-winded.

No kidding.

What are the rules for commenting?

1. Comment in good faith. This is not the place to play devil’s advocate or attempt to damage others. An oppositional position is fine if it’s what you genuinely think, believe, or wish to explore, and if it’s stated respectfully and thoughtfully. Shock value-posting and antagonism for its own sake won’t be tolerated. The editor can tell the difference.
2. Put effort into what you write. Bad writing will be deleted. This is an online literary journal and comments are considered a sort of soft publication, and should reflect that. Read over and edit your comment before you submit. We’re not asking for comments to be literature, but put in minimum effort and express yourself well.
3. No threats, harassment, calls to violence, or morally bankrupt statements. What counts as such is at the discretion of the editor, but use sense.
4. Critique ideas, not writing. Do not attempt to tear apart a contributor’s prose or deconstruct their poem in order to suggest line edits. Any work published has met or exceeded the editor’s standards for what constitutes adequate writing.

This isn’t a rule, but comments don’t, by any means, have to be critiques. They can be thoughts, appreciation, feelings, expression, or anything the work evokes in you, even if only tangentially related, or related in a way that isn’t readily apparent. The purpose of this site is conversation, not debate, though debate is fine too.

There is no word minimum or maximum for comments. They can be just a word or two or multiple paragraphs.

I don’t feel comfortable having comments open on my work. Can I opt out?

If you are publishing under either poetry section—Raw or Classic—yes. Poetry can be intensely personal and the author has the right to decide if they want feedback on that degree of exposure. In terms of Real, the nonfiction section, comments are automatically open, though keep in mind that comments are (lightly) moderated. However, if you are submitting a memoir piece or something painful, difficult, or personal to you, an exception can be made. Just indicate your preference in the submission form and a reason why if you don’t mind giving it.

How are comments moderated?

Comments in violation of the rules will be deleted. If a comment is on the fence, the editor might reply to it and invite you to fix it.

You deleted my comment! That violates my free speech.

Not really. CounterCulturalist isn’t a free-for-all, it’s a journal with minimal codes of conduct that shouldn’t be difficult to adhere to. If you can’t say what you’d like without your comment getting deleted, consider that the issue may be with your ability to express yourself rather than with us.