Topics & Themes We Could Do Without

Bukowski, Stories Written in the Style of

If we feel like reading Bukowski, we will read Bukowski.

College Stories, Drug-Related

Like strange dreams or constipation, we find these sort of experiences rarely make for good reading.

College Stories, General

See above.

College Stories, MFA-related

While likely untrue, we like to maintain the delusion that most of our readers are not writers, would-be-writers, or persons with advanced or knowledge or interest in the minutia of graduate creative writing programs.

Cowboy Poetry

Is a surprisingly common genre which we never want to read again.

Domestic Animals, Stories Written from the Perspective of

We get a lot of submissions like these, and they just don’t work.

Domestic Violence, Stories Depicting

We specialize in very short stories, and we’ve yet to read a submission that meets our length guidelines that doesn’t exceed our patience for melodrama.

iPhones, iPods, iDoohickey

Stories that make extensive mention of such technology — especially pieces that repeat the word “iDoohickey” or other plays on Apple’s product-naming conventions — are almost never amusing or fresh. If a character is making a call on a Blackberry or iPhone we find it is usually better just to use the word “phone” in lieu a specific device name or even the more-generic “smart phone” unless it is truly important to the story.

Violence Directed Against Non-Human Primates

We find abhorrent, especially when written for comic effect.