Hello Eleventh Hour Readers,
Welcome to our second issue! We’ve expanded to include poetry and visual art, and we received some wonderful submissions as a result. Our prose winner, JoAnneh Nagler, offers us the experience of wanderlust and self-determination in her short story “Sonja Clay”, while poet Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith shows us how music, relationships and memory are a catalyst for adventure in “The Go Button”. Our lovely cover art, Jazz Nights, was contributed by Binghamton University’s own Fine Arts student Daniella Pedi. We’re pleased to present you with another collection of high-quality prose, poetry and imagery from writers and artists who embrace the value of perseverance.
And we have another special opportunity for our contributors as well. If you’ve followed Eleventh Hour Literary, you know that the journal operates as a contest. All submissions go through two preliminary rounds, and if enough readers “upvote” the work, it enters our final round. After all readers score those submissions, the highest-ranked story and poem win a cash prize, and the next highest nine in each category earn publication. The system is democratic and has worked well — the top ten usually need the least editing, and resonate most strongly with readers.
But what if you came in at eleven?
In our first issue, we encountered this scenario. The eleventh entry, “Exposed”, was almost there — in fact, a single point kept it from the top ten. Since our mission is to revise and revisit previously rejected work, we decided to reach out to the writer, Jim Haggerty, and offer the “Eleventh Spot Workshop”:
“Thank you so much for allowing us to read your submission ‘Exposed’ for our inaugural issue. We thought the piece was very strong indeed. As you know from the terms of the contest, we are publishing the top-ten-ranked prose submissions. Yours was number eleven.
We want to extend the following offer to you, and we sincerely hope you will accept it: we, the editorial board, would like to conduct a workshop with you on this story, and provide you with feedback on how to revise it. Then, we would like you to resubmit it for consideration in the June issue…”
To our delight, Jim was all for it. Three of our editors scheduled a 30-minute workshop with him over Zoom, outlining strengths and weaknesses of the piece and discussing strategies for revision. The workshop was fun for all of us, and it was a pleasure to meet one of our submitters. Jim had this to say about the experience:
“I’ve been workshopped more than a few times, particularly as my stories have gone through multiple revisions over the years. Some good, some less-than-good, but my session with the editors at Eleventh Hour Literary may be the best experience I’ve ever had in such a session. They clearly read my work deeply, and their insight and advice really strengthened my story and its themes. Thank you, Eleventh Hour Literary, for making a story I really believed in even better!”
We tell you all of this not to puff ourselves up, but because, true to our mission, Jim resubmitted the story. This time, even with new readers evaluating the piece, it came in second place. We are proud to publish it in this edition of Eleventh Hour Literary.
Given the success of the workshop, we want to continue to offer this feature. Going forward, the writer of the eleventh-ranked selection for each contest will be offered the chance to work directly with the editors in a free workshop.
So, forget one, three, or seven: eleven is the new lucky number.
R. Renee Branca earned her master’s and doctorate in literature at Binghamton University. She is currently the director of the Binghamton University Lyceum (College of Community and Public Affairs), where her focus is on community engagement and higher education non-profit administration. She is the author of the story collection I Would For You (2024). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Orca, A Literary Journal; december; Cagibi; Sixfold; Bowery Gothic; Harpur Palate and elsewhere. Visit her at r-renee-branca.com.
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 