Big Score

“Shortcut,” by Diane Mehta: “I can’t remember how to reach / the end of my own sentences.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Every once in a while, I try my hand at writing lit fic; this is the first time I've liked one enough to send it out. If you like messy, queer break up stories, check out the sample and then buy a copy of the issue from @bigscorelit.bsky.social

"After two decades of mergers & layoffs, conglomerate publishing today is populated by a harried & attenuated workforce ill-equipped to discover or deliver the new. Original books need original editors, ones w ears to the ground & the freedom to actually edit..." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-54/the...

I’m super stoked to read Daniel Krause’ Pulitzer-winning novel, Angel Down. Fiction that wrangles with the notion of angels has always fascinated me…

Lil' update to say, Hey guys hey, thank you for the submissions you sent our way. We are digging them & will have some tough choices ahead...........!

Tonight's the night! Get in while you can... At the stroke of midnight, we will be open for submissions for our Fall issue. Read our guidelines (important!) here: bigscorelit.net/about/ Send us the GOOD stuff, please

If you're chagrined abt the "enshittification" of everything & believe in a return to first-order principles like paying writers decently, evaluating work independently of the author's platform, & publishing in print, then you might just believe in us too. bigscorelit.net

Our male protagonists — or perhaps men more broadly — are searching for meaning, solace, or glory anywhere but in the workplace. The trend represents a collective ambiguity about the point of work.

If you're chagrined abt the "enshittification" of everything & believe in a return to first-order principles like paying writers decently, evaluating work independently of the author's platform, & publishing in print, then you might just believe in us too. bigscorelit.net

V Woolf Hemingway Dostoevsky Beckett Pynchon

New issue coming soon of @bigscorelit.bsky.social aka the lit mag I edit... Read more abt us at the link beyondtheframe.substack.com/p/big-score-...

"What they often evinced was better than interest, better even than bibliophilia; it was the rare and precious capacity to be interested in what they didn’t already know interested them. It was a willingness to be changed."

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “‘Wuthering Heights’ is a story in which love is an all-encompassing obsession that destroys anything in its path. It is also a story about how love, sustained through generations, eventually redeems that destruction,” B.D. McClay writes.

With Ron Charles and Becca Rothfeld laid off from WaPo, there are now only 5 full-time book critics working in the United States. That's down from 7 when this pubbed last year, though you may find my definition of a "full-time book critic" arbitrary. worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

Doesn't feel antiquated to us. The number of writers on Substack drives home the hunger for reading/writing/community among writers. We believe in older fashioned network effects. Best way to show support is here, at annual cost of abt a month & a half of Netflix: bigscorelit.net/subscribe/

beachsloth.substack.com/p/big-score-... This desire to compensate people for the work they produce feels antiquated, almost like a job, which is a nice way of viewing writers.

Today’s haul from The Strand and @bookculture.com - Primo Levi, Iris Murdoch, Sam Lipsyte, and Yukio Mishima

Sent this out via the newsletter earlier and no one really responded to it, so here it is. Someone said writing a poem wasn't an act of resistance, likening it to a fart in the wind; true, but I didn't write this as an act of resistance. I wrote it because I didn't know how else to process it all.

Today’s purchase at the wonderful @flyleafbooks.bsky.social while here in Chapel Hill, NC - The Mezzanine by @nicholsonbaker.bsky.social (which I’ve read and plan on teaching next semester), and Lost in the City, by Edward P. Jones (which I’ve not yet read and I can’t wait to fix that)…

"Literature is fragile. It serves no obvious purpose. It does not feed us or clothe us or, unless you get very lucky, enrich us. But literature is also as close to immortal as any cultural endeavor of humankind has ever been." Gerald Howard www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o...

The Smart Search List of the Day is: Fee-Free Literary Poetry feat. @paranoidxtree.bsky.social @bigscorelit.bsky.social et al. https://duotrope.com...

Late-breaking update from a litmag now open for submissions (no fee to submit; pays for published work): bsky.app/profile/bigs...

We are currently open for poetry subs for our spring '26 issue & will remain so until Dec. 15th or the moment, nay the very second, we hit 300 subs... bigscorelit.net/2025/12/03/p...

New publisher listing for: Big Score Lit @bigscorelit.bsky.social (Fiction Poetry Nonfiction; pays sometimes). #WritingCommunity