Call for Submissions
Join us!
The common advice on Substack seems to be that, in order to build up a following, you need to post regularly. But, hey, some of us are working jobs! Some of us are pouring all of our writing time into novels that won’t see the light of day for years1! Some of us… just don’t have that much to say, honestly.
But what if you didn’t have to do it alone?
If you saw our recent letter from the editor, you may be wondering… what the hell is Dead Horse? Who is this strange, unknowable deity that seems to pull the strings, and who are the “interns” that make her offerings of fiction and essays?
Well, I’m sworn to secrecy regarding the Horse. But I can tell you about this Substack.
Dead Horse Press isn’t a magazine. We’re not an award. We’re a group of people with a variety of interests and a lot of things to write – be they short stories, opinion pieces, or historical deep-dives into gender-bending fashion. With a rotation of regular and one-off contributors, we’re able to create a regular Substack presence without overtaxing any individual writer, building up a collective audience in a range of different interest areas. We’re also able to help each other brainstorm, draft, discuss, and edit – here, writing doesn’t have to be a lonely process.
The idea is simple: get enough people churning out an essay every once in a while, and you’ll be able to maintain a regular posting schedule. Isn’t the Dead Horse smart? (All hail).
So… are you interested in joining her?
Become a contributor
This is not a submission process. You won’t send us a complete piece, get accepted/rejected, and then never hear from us again. We’re looking to collaborate.
So, whether you’re interested in making regular posts or just getting eyes on that one essay that’s been stuck in your craw, we’d love to hear from you!
If you want to get involved, shoot an email to deadhorsepress@proton.me with a pitch for an essay, short story, or other kind of post. We’ll talk it over with you, and if it seems like it would please the Dead Horse, we’ll help you workshop it, schedule it, and then send it out to our subscribers. We’ll also share the post around on other social media platforms. Once that post is complete, and if it seems like a good fit, you’ll have the option to join our Discord server and become a regular contributor.
Substack doesn’t have to be a zero-sum attention game. Together, we can create a creative ecosystem where writers can rely on a regular audience for their work, get feedback and support from other invested writers, build a following collaboratively, and – hopefully – expose each other to new and strange ideas.
Sob.