Overview

The Dream People is a biannual electric journal of Bizarro texts, an avant-garde genre of writing & artistry distinguished by absurdity, irrealism, the grotesque, narrative experimentation, dark humor, & ultimately a cult sensibility. We are looking for high-quality, stylized fiction that escapes the boundaries of reality & attempts to represent the unrepresentable. In addition to short stories & flash fiction, TDP publishes book reviews, interviews, creative nonfiction, artwork, animation, short films, & literary microcriticism.

TDP is published in May & November. The deadline for Issue #34 is October 1, 2010. Manuscripts are read all year long. Allow 1-2 months for a reply. TDP retains electronic rights for six months after the initial publication of accepted work. Payment for publication is the price of a cheap vodka martini—by our reckoning, FIVE BUCKS. Think Popov. Maybe Smirnoff. (NOTE: Authors are paid exclusively via PayPal.)

The editorial staff of TDP is highly selective. You are encouraged to read the magazine & get a sense of our aesthetic taste; such behavior, however, is not mandatory. Above all, make sure your submissions have teeth, & make sure every sentence counts.

SOME TIPS FOR GETTING PUBLISHED IN TDP: [1] Include a professional cover email & biography with each submission. [2] Foreground active over passive verbs. [3] Whenever possible, avoid adverbs ending in -ly in favor of active verbs. [4] Don't explicitly moralize but rather critique via representation and/or context, i.e., let the 3 Ds (Description, Detail and Dialogue) subtly assert whatever message you may be trying to convey. [5] Capture our attention with YOUR FIRST SENTENCE, which should be dynamic (in terms of prose) & unique (in terms of theme). [6] Don't write prose that is too colloquial; we hardly ever publish it. [7] Don't be weird simply for the sake fo being weird. [8] Be serious about your writing—but don't take your writing too seriously. (NOTE: These tips are subjective. We do not mean to suggest that they are rules for all good prose. Far from it. They simply reflect our personal tastes.)