What’s Better

Better is a magazine of culture and literature featuring articles, interviews, essays, artwork, stories, poems, and reviews by (and about) some of the best creative-types in the world today. Our goal is not to be the most prestigious, the most experimental, or even necessarily the best—we just want to be better. We think it’s time to raise the bar on what an online magazine can be and do, by featuring audio and video of as many contributors as possible, and by privileging art, writing, and other media that couldn’t be presented as effectively in a traditional paper-magazine format.

Better Is Currently Closed to Submissions

Better is on hiatus while we do a little re-imagining of our publishing and editorial structures; issue 7 will be launched Fall 2015. Check back soon to see what's happening. When we do re-open the transom, you can send us anything, so long as it hasn’t been published previously: articles, reviews, interviews, artwork, video, essays, stories, poems, songs, lists, manifestos, tirades, games, your new fashion statement, a detailed photo-catalog of your collection of vintage corkscrews, your pitches for post-apocalyptically marketed breakfast cereals—whatever you’re proud of or excited about: We’ll consider it. We have no length limits, but if that makes you uncomfortable, you can read suggestions on our submissions manager page. Simultaneous submissions are always acceptable, as long as you let us know if a submission has been taken elsewhere. We do ask, however, that you only submit one collection of work at a time, and that you wait until you receive a response before submitting again. Generally speaking, you should submit no more than once every six months. If you have work to submit to our Wish List, however (see below), we’ll allow you to submit up to two collections of work at any given time. You can submit to us here. Full withdrawals can be made through Submittable, and partial withdrawals can be made by appending a note to your Submittable submission. If we select your work for publication, we will request First North American Serial rights, Electronic rights, and Online Archival rights, as well as the rights to republish the accepted work in a future print anthology. Despite being a free-to-read startup magazine staffed and edited entirely by volunteers, with no grant funding or institutional support of any kind, Better is nevertheless striving toward a day when we can pay all contributors for their work. However, that goal won’t be reached all at once. At the moment, Better can sometimes (but not always) offer a limited honorarium (no more than $50) for fiction and creative nonfiction. We hope to be able to offer some form of compensation to poets in the near future, as well, but unfortunately we do not have the budget at this time.

The Wish Lists

Better maintains two “wish lists”—one for under-represented submissions, and one for donations of resources and production support. On the submissions side, note first that it is always always always in your interest to submit your best work, no matter what we say we want. Often even we don’t know what we want, so just give us your absolute best work, whatever that is. That said, eligible Wish List submissions include cultural criticism and mixed-media work of any kind—particularly audio/video essays or interactive works that could not be published in anything other than an online format (e.g. nonlinear fiction or poetry, essays that require audio or video interludes, This-American-Life-style audio journalism, etc.) If you send work that fits our Wish List requests, you're permitted to submit to us in another genre at the same time.

The Podcast & YouTube Channel

In 2014, we launched a YouTube channel, and we are currently working to archive every video we’ve ever produced for the magazine. In addition to the YouTube channel (to which we think you should subscribe immediately), we plan to launch a weekly podcast in the coming year. We know it’s not always easy or convenient to sit still and read a thirty-page story on your little laptop screen, which is why we want to give you a regular dose of Better in your ear-holes, and to provide a (slightly) more educated alternative to those late-night viral kitten videos.

Our Supporters

ETERNAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING DONORS:
Seth Abramson; Samuel Amadon; Cynda Collins Arsenault; Claire Askew; Jia Oak Baker; Hannah Baker-Siroty; Melissa Barrett; Zack Bean & Michelle Miley; Sarah Beil; Oliver Bendorf & Coco O’Connor; Lillian-Yvonne Bertram; Barbara Bishop; Seth Bishop; Sarah Blake; Jaz Blakeston-Petch; Bloof Books; Blue Bicycle Books; Paula Bomer; Jenn Brehm; Willam Brewer; Andrew Brininstool; Jeremy Bronaugh; Amelia Bucek; MaryAnn Bucek-Kenny; Rowan Hisayo Buchanan; E. S. Bumas; Jess Burgess; David Alan Butler; Tina V. Cabrera; Haley Campbell; Canarium Books; Kara Candito; Rachel Cann; Elisabeth Carter; Brittany Cavallaro; Laurie Ann Cedilnik; Michael Cherry; Andrew Cohen; Callie Collins; Lydia Conklin; Judy Coombs; Brandon Courtney; Katie Cortese; Wayne Cresser; Sara Crosby; Jennine Capó Crucet; Jesse Damiani; Stephen Danos; Kavita Das; Justin Lawrence Daugherty; Rachel Day; Sion Dayson; Jaquira Díaz; Michael Dickes; G Dietz; Will Donnelly; Michelle Dove; Ryler Dustin; Laura Eve Engel; Sandy Ewen; Jessica Farquhar; Raina L. Fields; Tamara Fish; Lydia Fitzpatrick; John Henry Fleming; Stephanie Ford; Graham Foust; Kit Frick; Philip Fried; Celeste Gainey; Christina Garofalo; Roxane Gay; Luke Gnadinger; Kevin Gonzalez; Lynn Goode; Kathy Goodkin; Benjamin Goodney; Deborah Gorlin; Lauren Gottlieb-Miller; Marcos B. Gouvea; Barry Grass; Keith W. Hagel; Liz Windhorst Harmer; Eli Hastings; Alison Hathaway; Rebecca Hazelton; Carolyn Roch & Matt Henneman; Chrissy Hennessey; Carolivia Herron; Chloe Honum; Robert Houghton; Missy & Peter Hyland; John James; Terrell James; Jay, Cait, and Finn; Kirby Johnson; Sara Eliza Johnson; Michael Jones; Skip Jones; Janine Joseph; Anna Journey; Cynthia Kane; Maya Kanwal; Jesse Lee Kercheval; John Kilduff; Kristin Kiser; Jen Knox; Loren Kwan; Linda Ledford-Miller; Jill Leininger; Eric & Kristin LeMay; Roxanne Leino; Shara Lessley; Line Assembly; Matthew Lippman; Brandon Lopez; Patrick Lucy; Kerb Lydick; Tony Mancus; Bronwyn Mahoney; Manor House Quarterly; Surena & Misty Matin; Toni Matlock; Matt Mauch; Nina McConigley; Molly McCracken; Shane McCrae; Edward McFadden; Kimberley McGill; Jenna McGuiggan; Leslie Anne Mcilroy; Jill Meyers; Joe Milazzo; Rebecca Miles; Andrew R. Missel; Judith Claire Mitchell; Christopher Mohar; Rachael Morrison; Mark A. Nakamura; Willy Nast; Denise Newman; Brian Nicolet; Matthew Nienow; Judy Nyquist; Dan O’Brien; Paul Otremba; Marian Palaia; John Bradley Peele; Adam Peterson; Emilia Phillips; Jessica Piazza; Jason Polan; Sarah Pollard; Niina Pollari; Justine Post; Lise M. Quintana; Michal Rosenn; Laura L. Runge; Benjamin Rybeck; Anjali Sachdeva; Matt Sailor; Yuko Sakata; Sarabande Books; Michael Schmeltzer; Rob Schlegel; Kate Schmitt; Andrew Scott; Chaiti Sen; Rinku Sen; Shifra Sharlin; Chris Shaw; G David Shaw; Matthew Siegel; Brian Simoneau; Chad Simpson; Jacob Singer; Eric Smith; Nancy Smith; S. E. Smith; Angela So; Mark Nathan Stafford; Jodee Stanley; Elizabeth Ames Staudt; Submittable; Austin Tremblay; Brian Trimboli; Kathryn & Josh Turner; Peter Van Hyning; Vanessa Angelica Villarreal; Coert Voorhees; Susan Vorkoper; Becca Wadlinger; Ron Wallace; Wave Books; Michael West & Mary West; Sasha West & Charlie Clark; Adrienne Westall; Christopher Weston; Valerie Wetlaufer; Jessica Wilbanks; Patrick Williams; Steven Wolfe; Lesley Wolff; Michael Wright; Steven Wright; Maybritt Rose Young; Laurie Saurborn Young

Who We Are

SEAN BISHOP, Better’s founder, is the author of The Night We’re Not Sleeping In, published by Sarabande Books in December 2014. A poet, designer, and web developer, Sean also teaches in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he coordinates both the Graduate and Post-Graduate Fellowship programs.

MIKEY SWANBERG is a Poetry Editor at Better and the co-host, with Sean Bishop, of Better’s forthcoming podcast. He is the Poetry Editor of Rabbit Catastrophe Review and the author of Zen and the Art of Bicycle Delivery. He is a recipient of the Jane Gentry Vance Award in Poetry and he lives in Madison, WI. You can find him on Twitter @mikeyswanberg.

LIV STRATMAN is a Fiction Editor at Better. From 2013-2014 she was the Editor of Devil’s Lake. Her writing appears in The Cincinnati Review, CutBank, and elsewhere. A native of Amityville, New York, she lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can find her on Twitter @livrstrat.

KENT SHAW (Emeritus) was a Poetry Editor at Better for issues 3 through 6. He is an Assistant Professor at West Virginia State University, and a regular book reviewer at The Rumpus. His book, Calenture, was published in 2008. His poems have since appeared in The Believer, Ploughshares, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Witness, and other magazines.

TARASHEA NESBIT (Emerita) was Better’s Nonfiction Editor for issues 3 through 7. Her first novel The Wives of Los Alamos was released by Bloomsbury in 2014. Her prose, poetry, and criticism have been featured in Quarterly West, The Iowa Review (Online), Hayden's Ferry Review, The Laurel Review, and other literary journals. She teaches creative writing and literature courses at the University of Denver and the University of Washington in Tacoma.

CAROLINA EBEID (Emerita) was a Poetry Editor at Better for issues 3 through 7. Her work appears in many journals, including Poetry; Agni; 32 Poems; Forklift, Ohio; Crazyhorse; Memorious; Gulf Coast; The Kenyon Review; and others. She grew up in West New York, NJ, and now resides with the poet Jeffrey Pethybridge and their son Patrick.

MARK NATHAN STAFFORD (Emeritus) was Better’s Arts Editor for issues 4 through 7. He is a sculptor and digital artist whose work has appeared in numerous national and international exhibitions, most recently, the 2013 NCECA Biennial Exhibition at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. His critical writing has appeared in Art Papers and Ceramics: Art and Perception. He currently teaches at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, GA.

DAVID SCHUMAN (Emeritus) was a Fiction Editor at Better for issue 6. He teaches fiction writing at Washington University in St. Louis, where he directs the MFA program. His stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Missouri Review, Joyland, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, among other magazines and anthologies.

LO KWA MEI-EN (Emerita) was a Poetry Editor at Better for issues 6 and 7. She is the author of Yearling, which won the 2013 Kundiman Poetry Prize from Alice James Books. Her poems can be found in Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Guernica, The Kenyon Review, West Branch, and other journals, and won the Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize. She hails from Ohio.

SALLY J JOHNSON (Emerita) was the Managing Editor at Better for issue 6. She is the former Managing Editor of Ecotone, her poems appear in Everyday Genius, So to Speak, and Sundog Lit, and her essays appear in The Collagist, Treehouse, and Heavy Feather Review. She is a publicist for John F. Blair, Publisher, and she lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

DANIEL O’MALLEY (Emeritus) was a Fiction Editor at Better for issues 6 and 7. He grew up in Missouri and currently lives in West Virginia, where he teaches at Marshall University. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Meridian, Third Coast, The Baltimore Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among other publications.

DAISY ALIOTO (Emerita) was Better’s Social Media Editor for issue 6. She is a poet-journalist (or perhaps journalist-poet) living, working, and marveling in NYC. Her work has appeared on the websites of NPR and ELLE magazine and in The Christian Science Monitor. She is a proud graduate of Bowdoin College, where a good pair of winter boots are the soul of wit.

SOPHIE ROSENBLUM (Emerita) was a Fiction Editor at Better for issues 1 through 4. She is a former Rice University Parks Fellow, and her novel-in-progress was recently a finalist for the James Jones Novel Fellowship. She is a doctoral student in Literature and Creative Writing at Florida State University, where she is the Berger Fellow. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, New Letters, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is also the web editor at NANO Fiction.

EDWARD MULLANY (Emerita) was a Fiction Editor at Better for issues 1 through 5. He is the author of If I Falter at the Gallows (Publishing Genius, 2011) and Figures for an Apocalypse (forthcoming). His writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Tampa Review, Green Mountains Review, Gesture, and other journals. He keeps a blog called Notes From a Resuscitated Man. He grew up in Australia and in the Midwest.

LAURA EVE ENGEL (Emerita) was a Poetry Editor at Better for issues 1 through 3. She was the 2011-2012 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and will be a poetry fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in 2014. She is the co-author of [Spoiler Alert], a collaborative volume of flash fiction available from Dzanc Books.

RACHAEL MORRISON (Emerita) was Better’s Arts Editor for issues 1 and 2. She is an interdisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. She has curated an exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art’s Library in New York, the Printed Matter NY Art Book Fair, Microscope Gallery, and The Public School NY. Her artwork has been featured on the BBC1 television program Imagine, in New York Magazine, and in Art das Kunstmagazin. She is currently working on a documentary film about a blind telephone hacker named Joybubbles.

OUR DONATION WISH LIST:

We're on the lookout for individuals or organizations willing to provide any of the following goods and services, free of charge or on the cheap. We are currently in the process of applying for 501(c)(3) non-profit status, and until we are granted that status, in-kind donations may not be tax-deductible. All donations will be acknowledged in this Wish List unless otherwise requested by the donor.

Material items may be sent to the attention of Sean Bishop, Editor / Better: Culture & Lit / 946 E. Johnson St. #1 / Madison, WI 53703. Electronic deliveries may be sent to better.culture.lit@gmail.com. Thank you!

SERVICES:

(1) High-bandwidth web-hosting with unlimited server space and, ideally, SSL encryption. This will allow us to deliver multi-media content efficiently to our readers, and to maintain an extensive archive of audio and video.

(2) A subscription to Airdropper, which will allow contributors without DropBox memberships to upload large-format audio and video efficiently and easily.

(3) A subscription to DropBox's 100G "Pro" membership level, so that we can provide contributors with the means to upload large-format video and audio of their works.

(4) A Skype Premium membership, which will not only allow us to direct our writers in the production of their videos, but also help Better continue to be a journal whose editors, contributors, and correspondents are selected not for their geographic proximity to one another, but for their skill and expertise.

(5) A Facebook and/or Google Ads subscription.

(6) Other gratis advertising space of any kind.

MATERIALS & SOFTWARE:

(1) One or more 64G iPod Touches, for us to mail back and forth with contributors who do not own adequate audio and video recording equipment themselves.

(2) One or more Rode SmartLav Microphones to use in conjunction with the iPods (since the internal microphones are insufficient for podcast-quality recording).

(3) A Blue Yeti Pro podcasting microphone, for use in recording the Better podcast.

(4) Wirecast streaming software, so that we can deliver large-format or live audio/video efficiently.