In-Depth Manuscript Consultations from Electric Literature!

The editorial staff of Electric Literature  offers in-house manuscript consultations on an ongoing basis. Writers may enroll to receive a comprehensive manuscript review, with detailed notes and a video call with one of our talented EL editors. This opportunity extends to writers of all experience levels.

Availability: The number of consultations is based on staff availability, and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. One slot will be reserved for members at a 5% discount. Learn more about becoming an EL member here.

Timeline: Once you have purchased a manuscript consultation, you have two weeks to submit your manuscript. Each writer will receive detailed marginal notes and a 30-minute video or phone call with their editor, to be completed within two months of submission.

Manuscript consultations may be purchased for $300 through the Electric Literature store or via Submittable. Members who did not already receive a private link to purchase discounted consults should email editors@electricliterature.com to request the link.

Writers who have previously completed a manuscript consultation with an EL editor are eligible to purchase a revision consult, which includes comprehensive re-review, with detailed notes and a 30-minute video call for a revised version of a previously submitted manuscript. The fee for a revision consultation is $150.

Instructions, Requirements, and Details

• Manuscript consultations are available for short fiction and essays up to 6,000 words.
• Writers may submit one short story, one essay, or an excerpt of a longer work totaling up to 6,000 words. To give the work the attention it deserves, we ask that writers do not submit multiple short stories or essays.
• 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.
• Each manuscript will be assigned to an EL editor from the roster below. We are not able to accommodate requests to be paired with a specific editor, though if you have previously purchased a manuscript consultation, please let us know if you would prefer to continue to work with the same editor, or be paired with someone new, and we will do our best to accommodate your preference.
• 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. 
• 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 fiction or nonfiction.

Editor Bios

Kelly Luce, Editor of The Commuter

Kelly Luce has 15 years of experience editing both fiction and nonfiction. Former positions include the Editor-in-Chief of Bat City Review and an editorial assistant for the O Henry Prize, 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 the 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 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, the Wigleaf Top 50, Best Small Fictions, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and won a SAJA Award. She has taught novel writing for Writing Workshops 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 AM Homes, Weike Wang, Sheila Heti, Helen DeWitt, James Hannaham, Laura van den Berg, Charles Yu, Etgar Keret, Ben Marcus, Maggie Shipstead, Nathan Harris, and 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 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 and Editor of Recommended Reading

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 the 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 on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. Wynter has worked at Electric Literature since 2021 and previously served as a contributing editor, the Interim Books Editor, and the Associate Editor. She is currently the Managing Editor, as well as an editor of 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, “Group Sex” by Elisa Faison, “Dumb Animals” by Alastair Wong, and “What a Body Is Good For” by Allison Grace Myers. 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 the Editor-in-Chief of Electric Literature, where she spearheaded Both/And, a groundbreaking series of 15 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 Henken Robinson, Associate Editor of Nonfiction

Katie Henken Robinson is currently an 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 Personal Narratives and cultural criticism. 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 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, including 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.

Calling all readers! Electric Literature is always accepting applications for volunteer readers to join our editorial team in one of three capacities: 

1. Recommended Reading, EL’s weekly fiction magazine, publishes one story a week: a mix of original work, forgotten classics, and forthcoming excerpts, each with a personal foreword by today’s best writers. Readers must commit to reading ten stories per week, ranging in length from 2,000 to 8,000 words.
2. The Commuter, EL’s weekly magazine of flash fiction, poetry, and graphic narratives, publishes one piece of original work per week, as well as occasional forthcoming excerpts. Readers must commit to reading ten pieces of flash prose or poetry per week.
3. EL publishes Personal Narrative essays weekly on wide-ranging topics that center narrative and consider what it means to essay as a verb; in other words, what it means to use prose to interrogate, investigate, adventure, and introspect. Readers must commit to reading ten essays per week, running in length from 2,000 to 6,500 words. Personal Narrative is actively seeking readers through 8/30 for our upcoming reading cycle, beginning this September. Applications received after 8/30 will be considered for future cycles.

Electric Literature receives a large volume of submissions in all categories, and a committed corps of volunteer readers is essential to helping the editors find new, unknown, and/or overlooked talent.

All reader positions are volunteer and require a commitment to complete reading assignments on a weekly basis for approximately six months. Readers will work remotely and on their own schedules (as long as they meet the weekly deadline). Current readers are not allowed to submit their own work for consideration in the category they are reading in.

Responsibilities include:

• Reading ten pieces per week, ranging from 2,000 to 8,000 words for Recommended Reading and 2,000 to 6,500 words for personal narrative. Submissions for The Commuter vary in length, but a poetry submission typically contains three poems or two to three pieces of flash fiction.
• Providing concise but thorough responses (one to two paragraphs) for each submission, with a clear YES or NO recommendation for each.
• Meeting weekly reading deadlines, and clearly communicating with editorial staff when scheduling conflicts arise.

The ideal applicant is:

• An avid and attentive reader
• A proactive and responsive communicator
• Self-motivated and able to meet deadlines
• Able to express themself clearly in writing
• A regular reader of the category who is familiar with its back catalogue
• An educational background in literature and/or professional experience in literary criticism, editing, and creative writing is a plus, but not required
• An active participant in their local literary scene, and an avid reader of contemporary writing

This is a volunteer position that requires a commitment of approximately six hours a week for six months, with an opportunity to renew. Readers will work remotely and on their own schedules (as long as they meet the weekly deadline). 

Current readers are not allowed to submit their own work for consideration in the category they are reading in. Discussion of submissions outside Electric Literature is strictly prohibited, and will result in immediate termination. 

For a sense of the kind of submissions you’ll be reading, visit our website and take a look at literary magazines and essays.

If you are interested in reading for Recommended Reading, please submit your resume and a two-paragraph response/critique of a story published in Recommended Reading. If your resume is selected, the application process will also include a reading test.

If you are interested in reading for The Commuter, please submit your resume and a one-paragraph response/critique of a piece of flash fiction or poetry published in The Commuter. 

If you are interested in reading personal narrative essays, please submit your resume and a two-paragraph response/critique of an essay published in our Personal Narrative vertical. If your resume is selected, the application process will also include a reading test.

Applications will be accepted year-round, and we will review and take on new readers as needed.