We’re not very vocal on this blog, but that’s simply because there’s a lot of work involved in the production of 34 Orchard—and our readers are writers and editors, too. Every minute we spend blogging is a minute we don’t spend on the issue.

That said, I wanted to take a moment to give everyone an “Inbox Update.” During our debut submission period, in January, we received a little over 700 submissions. From those, we selected 16 to publish.

This time around, our numbers have significantly increased … perhaps, because of the pandemic and people have been home. We have nine days left of submissions to go. We have turned down 650 submissions so far (keep in mind, some of those contain three poems each). We have one hundred new ones to be reviewed, with approximately fifty more coming in every day, and our volume is so high that, at this point, we are only sending out notices on pieces we are rejecting until our window closes on July 31.

We have, so far, accepted just seven pieces of work.

That said, if you’ve not heard from us yet, it means your story or poem is being held to read after the window closes, and we’ll make a decision then. Right now, that is about thirty pieces. If you’d like to query, we welcome that, just please note it may take a couple of days to get back to you. Not only are we all writers and editors, we have full-time jobs—and most of us didn’t get the luxury of working from home.

We hope you are having a productive summer, and thank you for letting us read your work!