HARSH publishes flash fiction, short stories, prose poetry and anything resembling something readable. “There are many ways to upset a reader; HARSH aims to discover all of them.” Read the complete guidelines here.
SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?
B.R.: I can’t speak for Maggie, but for me personally:
- Originality. Does it have a unique voice? Does it have a unique take on its subject?.
- Emotional weight. Does it feel like a hydraulic press crushing my chest?
- Efficiency. Does it accomplish what it needs to at a length that suits the medium? Does it account for the fact that most people are going to be reading their piece off a handheld screen?
Maggie: He can speak for me on this one.
SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?
Maggie: While we obviously traffic in brutality and aberrance, I have no interest in submissions that are depraved or violent for depravity and violence's sake. I am more interested in the motivations behind these actions than the actions themselves, and it quickly becomes clear when a submission is more concerned with spilling blood than finding interesting reasons to do so. Anything that resembles a manifesto or rant against the modern world probably will not find a home at HARSH either. And while I do love reading work with a strong visual component, I tend to avoid publishing anything with abnormal formatting or anything resembling visual poetry.
B.R.: The obvious trademarks of “transgressive” or “edgy/shocking” lit. I’m hesitant to specify any further because I don’t want to suggest any particular topics or styles are off limits—ultimately, execution is everything. But I also think it’s easy to focus too much on including subjects or situations (or even aesthetics) that are only hypothetically upsetting. In these cases, the piece often ends up failing because there’s no emotional heft to it. I think a lot of people could see HARSH’s name and the aesthetic and assume we’re just looking for standard splatterpunk fare, and paragraphs upon paragraphs of gore or sexual violence, but that misses the point. More often than not I find splatterpunk to be an absolutely boring and lifeless subgenre. There’s so much more that can be done. Like, a piece about losing your dog can be very upsetting, when done well, even if it doesn’t seem edgy or shocking.
SQF: What do you look for in the opening paragraph(s) of a submission?
B.R.: I’m someone who is attracted to language and style first, so a powerful, unique style is usually what initially grabs me.
Maggie: I love when it's clear that the writer is confident in the world they're building. I'm not looking for hesitation.
SQF: You want stories that upset the reader. Are there certain topics/subject matter the writer should avoid?
Maggie: All I ask is that writers consider the full impact of the events they describe. The gold standard for me is “Blood Meridian,” a book filled with just about every deviant act one could imagine that nevertheless takes the time to pull back and depict the effects of those actions.
B.R.: I don’t necessarily think any topics are off limits, so long as the execution is quality. I guess one thing I would say is that being flippant doesn’t impress me. It’s not enough to just detail someone’s violation—if you’re going to do that, there better be a killer emotional and/or psychological component to it.
SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I'd asked that I didn't? And how would you answer it?
Maggie: "What are non-literary examples of the aesthetic you're trying to cultivate?" My decision to launch HARSH earlier this year was primarily motivated by my desire to find literature that goes for the throat in the same manner as some of my favorite art in other mediums. HARSH, for me, is influenced by noise music first and foremost; Whitehouse's “Bird Seed,” Consumer Electronics' “Estuary English,” Ramleh's “Hole in the Heart,” Peter Rehberg's “Work for GV 2004-2008,” Lingua Ignota's “All Bitches Die.” Many of these have textual or spoken word components, but the immediacy of the sound and how that form builds mood is something I chase after in literature. As I tend to think about my own work in terms of film, there are many movies that come to mind as well; “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “The Devils,” “Auto-Focus, “Loveless,” “Tokyo Fist,” and many, many others all exemplify harshness in different ways.
B.R.: I'd love to tack on: Suda51, billy woods, Khanate, woodlands adjacent to gas stations, photos of dads blowing lines off the hood of their car.
Thank you, Maggie and B.R. We all appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.
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