New Lit on the Block :: Sundog Lit
Sundog Lit is a brand new online magazine (which I recently reviewed on Screen Reading) that quarterly publishes literary fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid works as well as occasional video, photography, and art. “We started this magazine because we were tired of quiet lit, stories where nothing happens and people stand around, idle, wondering about life instead of living it,” says Managing/Founding Editor Justin Lawrence Daugherty. “Our mission is to publish literature that scorches the earth. We don’t want quiet. We want it loud and incendiary.”
The name comes from an atmospheric phenomenon in which bright spots of light appear in the sky near the sun, sometimes making it seem as if the sun were wearing a halo. Daugherty says that this dual-sun image was perfect to describe their magazine, one in which was about both serious literature and about being “active, destructive, generating, and explosive.”
The editors aim to leave an imprint on their readers, allowing the literature to stick with them even after the internet browser is closed. Daugherty also expresses that readers will find a community of writers. “We promote work through our Friday Rex series, book-promotions such as in our current Texts Inspired by Robert Kloss’ The Alligators of Abraham series.” In time, they hope to bring in more hybrid works and experimental essays, photography and art, contests, and themed issues.
The first issue includes fiction from Lindsay Hunter, Casey Hannan, Aaron Teel, Ryan Werner, Edward Hagelstein, Helen McClory, and Jesse Hertz; nonfiction from Matthew Gavin Frank, Laura Zak, and Will Kaufman; and poetry from Bianca Diaz, Sarah Wynn, Donald Parker, Jenna Lynch, Cameron Witbeck, Daniel Romo, Charles Rafferty, and Valentina Cano.
The deadline for the next issue is mid-January, and Sundog Lit accepts submissions through Submittable. The other editors of the magazine include Fiction Editor Mensah Demary, Nonfiction Editor Richard Hackler, Poetry Editors Zarah Moeggenberg and Amy Pajewski, and Website Design and Nonfiction Editor Cynthia Brandon Slocum.
