Genre: growth Quarterly Review 🌱

Announcing the "Genre: growth Quarterly Review," a literary review featuring genre fiction from across Substack. Submissions are open for fiction and nonfiction pieces published on Substack

Contents

1. Format

2. Guidelines

3. Categories

   1. Fiction

   2. Nonfiction

4. Notes

5. Changelog

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Today, I'm happy to announce the Genre: growth Quarterly Review.

This is going to be a literary review featuring selections of genre fiction from across Substack.

Publication date: April 1, 2025

Format

• This is going to be a post of a list of the best fiction & nonfiction across genres each quarter.

• the link is a cross post that drives traffic directly back to your Substack. That's why we're here right? Putting eyeballs on your work.

Guidelines

• Each individual piece must be no longer than 5,000 words.

• One submission per person.

• Those 5,000 words must be self-contained. If they consist of multiple chapters, they must wrap up into a cohesive story in and of themselves.

• Piece must be published on Substack. Cannot only be published somewhere else. Make sense?

Categories

There will be one entry from all of the following published:

Fiction

• Historical fiction (filled, “Hild’s Tale, Chapter 6” by Holly A Brown)

• Romance fiction

• Fantasy fiction (filled, “An Angry Man in the Road, Covered in Blood” by

  Tom Schecter
  )

• Horror fiction (filled, “I Watched a 10-Year-Old Boy Get Murdered (Shifting Shadows: Forward/Chapter One)“ by Merlin Senthil)

• Sci-Fi fiction (filled, “Murder on the Stellar Schooner, part 1“ by Brian Heming)

• Speculative fiction (filled, “Beautiful Boy in the Window” by

  The Threshold
  )

• Poetry in any category (filled, “Dead Man’s Fingers” by The Scorched Pages)

• Poetry in 'traditional' meter

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Nonfiction

• Academic paper (filled, “what's pragmatic about medieval romance literature?” by

  Robert Whitley
  )

• Cultural essay (filled, “Princess Bride The Great Fairy-Tale Movie of the 80s“ by

  The Brothers Krynn
  )

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★ ★ ★

First person to nominate a piece in this chat (and you can self submit) gets the spot. Looking forward to seeing who wants to participate!!

★ ★ ★

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Notes

• I do reserve the right to veto stories that are grotesque, insulting, hateful, poorly written, bigoted, anything that makes the Internet a worse place, basically.

• By the way, I want edgy and boundary pushing.

• If for no other reason than it drives traffic.

• But also, that's usually where the best writing is.

• if you're concerned your piece won't be considered at least a little bit, then you're probably going to be fine.

Changelog

2025-03-21

• Cosmetic updates.

• Adding Brian Heming

• Added Hild’s Tale: Chapter 6 (~1,300 words)

2025-03-27

• Adding The Threshold.

2025-03-29

• Adding in from shieldbreaker Saga